With a rigorous recruitment process and a changing landscape in collegiate sports, Lennox Graham, associate head coach of Clemson University track and field programme, said Jamaican athletes need to be prepared academically if they want to enter the US collegiate ranks.
Graham was in attendance at the National Stadium for the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championships (Champs) to monitor several of Jamaica’s best young athletes.
The veteran Jamaican coach, who previously coached at Kingston College (KC), has been at Clemson University for nearly a decade and holds a speciality in long sprints and hurdles.
He has coached several of Jamaica’s top hurdlers, including two-time women’s 100m hurdles world champion Danielle Williams.
The man, who currently coaches Jamaica’s rising prospect Oneka Wilson, who is the four-time Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) indoor 60m hurdles champion, says in his decades of experience, he has come to realise that while Jamaican athletes are ready to excel on the track, they are not aware of the academic standards needed to secure a move to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) ranks.
He said this will result in athletes being forced to take different opportunities like going to junior colleges or entering the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA).
“As far as being ready academically, they are required to do some core subjects in order to qualify to come straight to Division I or Division II,” Graham explained.
“Sometimes they fall short, so they’ll have to go to [junior colleges] or NAIA. I find that there’s a gap in kind of educating the kids about what they require academically to come over to the US to the NCAA system.”
Graham explained another key detail, which has caused a major shift in collegiate sport, as being the introduction of Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) deals, and other forms of compensation in college sports.
As athletes now stand the chance of earning while competing in the NCAA, Graham said it is important for Jamaicans to understand the opportunities open to them, the risks they face, and the legal implications that may come with accepting endorsement deals.
“Sometimes people say NIL when it’s not really NIL. NIL is ‘Name, Image and Likeness’, and that has to do with you doing something in order to receive something financial,” he explained.
“A lot of times when they say you give a kid an NIL, it’s really not an NIL because the kid has to do nothing. There’s also legal ramifications of an international kid having an NIL from a local, meaning local to the US, sponsor so that is not something that they should do.”
Graham said with all these in play, it is important for student-athletes to choose schools which have their best interests at heart.
He explained it is also important for coaches to play the role of mentors, and to ensure their athletes are kept informed of the opportunities at their disposal.
“Personally, I’m a mentor and coaching is just a tool that God gave me to be able to mentor kids of a particular skill set, meaning track and field.
“My job is to let them know what is available. But of course, there are ways around that and once the kid comes to us, then of course we are responsible for mentorship in that area too.”
