Caribbean Beat — March/April 2019 (#156)

need to know
Kevona Davis of Edwin Allen
High School won the girls’
100m and 200m races, both
in records times, at CHAMPS
2018
Gilbert Bellamy/Photosbybellamy
On the Field
Calling all CHAMPS
Kellie Magnus explains why Jamaica’s high school athletics championships
loom large on the sports calendar — and predict future Olympic stardom
Maybe it’s the statues of track legends
that adorn the grounds of Jamaica’s
National Stadium. Olympic medalist
Don Quarrie stands guard at the
entrance, while Arthur Wint, Herb
McKenley, Merlene Ottey, and Usain
Bolt beckon athletes from other points
of the complex. Maybe it’s the rhythm
of history — decades of tradition, glory,
and sweat baked into the floor and
walls of the McDonald Tunnel, through
which the athletes pour onto the track.
Maybe it’s the hopes and dreams of an
audience 35,000 strong, who strain the
stadium’s capacity and roar athletes
on to break records with astonishing
predictability. Whatever the reason,
when the stadium opens on 26 March,
the expectation for greatness will
already have been set.
Its official name is the ISSA/
Grace Kennedy Boys and Girls
Championships. Jamaican track
fans know it as CHAMPS. In 2019,
the five-day carnival of running
celebrates its 109th year. Hosted by
the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports
Association, CHAMPS is the premier
high school athletic competition in
the Caribbean, and the biggest high
school athletic event in the world. The
Boys Championships began in 1910
as a competition between a handful
of prominent high schools at another
storied Kingston location — the cricket
grounds at Sabina Park. The Girls
Championships started in 1914, settling
into an annual schedule in the 1960s.
The two were merged in 1999.
The result is a solid week of athletic
excellence with sprint events (100m,
200m, 400m, 800m, 100m/110m
hurdles) and the 1500 arranged by class
and gender. Open distance events
including the 5,000m and the 2,000m
steeplechase and a full array of field
events — high jump, long jump, triple
jump, pole vault, discus, shot put, and
javelin (girls only), plus the heptathlon
— round out the schedule. Then there
are the relays — hotly contested
4x100s, 4x400s, and medleys featuring
Jamaica’s top thirty-two teams, their
places won by times at sanctioned
meets on the country’s grueling high
school athletics calendar.
High school loyalties run deep in
Jamaica, and the CHAMPS trophy tops
the list of local prizes worth bragging
rights. The three-thousand-plus
athletes who will take to the track
this March represent more than one
hundred schools. But in 109 years, only
sixteen schools have won a CHAMPS
title. Longstanding rivals Kingston
College and Calabar High School will
resume their battle this year, with
Calabar looking to extend their sevenyear
winning streak and add another
precious title to the three they need
to surpass KC as the boys’ school with
the most CHAMPS titles. Meanwhile,
recent Girls Champs’ powerhouse
Edwin Allen High School will need many
more wins to surpass Vere Technical’s
twenty-two.
But while loyal alums come for the
contest, most of the crowd in the
stadium comes for the show. Qualifying
and finishing times at CHAMPS,
particularly in Class 1 (ages sixteen to
nineteen) rival those of any international
track meet. The 2018 staging
saw twenty-one record-breaking
performances. And each year reveals a
new cast of athletics stars likely to shine
in Jamaica’s already bright constellation
for decades to come.
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