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JAAA is athletics' deadbeat dad
Published: Friday | August 24, 2012
Long-distance runners like Semoya Campbell of Spalding High are unlikely to thrive globally if the JAAA doesn't source professional help, says Orville Higgins. - FILE
Orville Higgins
By Orville Higgins
It's now confirmed, if anyone had any doubts, that Jamaica is the sprint capital of the world.
Maybe I'm just greedy, or maybe it's just part of human nature to hanker for what you don't have, but I feel it's now time we seriously look at doing well in the longer distances and put a plan in place so that, as early as the next Olympics in Brazil, we should be more competitive in the 400m and the 800m, at least. This is something that the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) can take on as a real project.
The JAAA can take no real credit for what we have done on the global stage. I am aware that, from time to time, the organisation may help with individual athletes or particular school programmes, but, as a rule, Jamaica is dominant in the sprints without the parent body of track and field being 'responsible' for our success.
Champs is the arena where most of Jamaica's future athletic stars get their feet wet in high-quality performances, and learning how to handle pressure. It's the single biggest reason behind Jamaica's success in the sprints globally.
Champs is, however, organised by ISSA, not the JAAA, and so the latter, by and large, is an organisation that has an international profile because of the success of our sprinters, despite doing very little to earn that status.
TIME TO EARN ITS STRIPES
The time has come for the JAAA to earn its stripes. The local governing body for track and field must now see itself as an entity that not only presides over successful athletes, but as an organisation that helps to create them.
The yawning gap between our performance in the sprints and our exploits elsewhere is something that the JAAA should now see as a concern. It must be proactive at putting plans and systems in place to remedy that imbalance. In other words, the JAAA can no longer sit by and leave the high schools and their coaches, as well as local professional clubs, to plot the way forward for Jamaica's track and field programme.
This isn't done in any other sport. In football, cricket, volleyball and netball, for example, it is the presidents of those associations, together with their executives, that determine the direction of their sport.
In these sports, it is the national association that has to come up with plans and programmes to ensure that the sport is thriving at the lower levels, while always ensuring that the national team is as strong as it should be.
Track and field is different. The sport is driven by different factors elsewhere, and the JAAA is almost like the absentee father who 'live a foreign', visits home sporadically, does very little to assist his child financially, does very little 'fathering', and then beams with pride at his child's high-school or university graduation. That's not good enough.
The JAAA must be more responsible and proactive in plotting the direction in track and field.
I would advise that organisation to come up with a plan to improve other disciplines in the sport outside of sprinting. This could mean anything from importing specialist coaches in the other events, to sending away our top athletes in the other disciplines to get special attention overseas. This must be done as a rule, annually, and not something that is pursued in a sporadic or ad hoc fashion.
Another thing the JAAA could do is create bigger incentive packages for those who do well outside of the sprints. How about offering a substantial monetary reward for high-school students and their coaches who come close to world standards in, say, the 800m or the 1500m. The reason we don't do well in those events is that, in Jamaica, glamour doesn't surround those disciplines. Therefore, neither coaches nor athletes take the longer distances as seriously as we should.
Rather than just bemoaning that fact, we ought to do something about it so that our talented high-school athletes can see genuine benefits in competing outside the sprints. If we don't do that, we will be perennially celebrating our sprinters at the Olympics, while continuing to wonder about stillborn opportunities elsewhere.
Over to you, JAAA.
Sportscaster Orville Higgins is the 2011 winner of the Hugh Crosskill/Raymond Sharpe Award for Sports Reporting. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/2...cleisure3.html
Published: Friday | August 24, 2012
Long-distance runners like Semoya Campbell of Spalding High are unlikely to thrive globally if the JAAA doesn't source professional help, says Orville Higgins. - FILE
Orville Higgins
By Orville Higgins
It's now confirmed, if anyone had any doubts, that Jamaica is the sprint capital of the world.
Maybe I'm just greedy, or maybe it's just part of human nature to hanker for what you don't have, but I feel it's now time we seriously look at doing well in the longer distances and put a plan in place so that, as early as the next Olympics in Brazil, we should be more competitive in the 400m and the 800m, at least. This is something that the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) can take on as a real project.
The JAAA can take no real credit for what we have done on the global stage. I am aware that, from time to time, the organisation may help with individual athletes or particular school programmes, but, as a rule, Jamaica is dominant in the sprints without the parent body of track and field being 'responsible' for our success.
Champs is the arena where most of Jamaica's future athletic stars get their feet wet in high-quality performances, and learning how to handle pressure. It's the single biggest reason behind Jamaica's success in the sprints globally.
Champs is, however, organised by ISSA, not the JAAA, and so the latter, by and large, is an organisation that has an international profile because of the success of our sprinters, despite doing very little to earn that status.
TIME TO EARN ITS STRIPES
The time has come for the JAAA to earn its stripes. The local governing body for track and field must now see itself as an entity that not only presides over successful athletes, but as an organisation that helps to create them.
The yawning gap between our performance in the sprints and our exploits elsewhere is something that the JAAA should now see as a concern. It must be proactive at putting plans and systems in place to remedy that imbalance. In other words, the JAAA can no longer sit by and leave the high schools and their coaches, as well as local professional clubs, to plot the way forward for Jamaica's track and field programme.
This isn't done in any other sport. In football, cricket, volleyball and netball, for example, it is the presidents of those associations, together with their executives, that determine the direction of their sport.
In these sports, it is the national association that has to come up with plans and programmes to ensure that the sport is thriving at the lower levels, while always ensuring that the national team is as strong as it should be.
Track and field is different. The sport is driven by different factors elsewhere, and the JAAA is almost like the absentee father who 'live a foreign', visits home sporadically, does very little to assist his child financially, does very little 'fathering', and then beams with pride at his child's high-school or university graduation. That's not good enough.
The JAAA must be more responsible and proactive in plotting the direction in track and field.
I would advise that organisation to come up with a plan to improve other disciplines in the sport outside of sprinting. This could mean anything from importing specialist coaches in the other events, to sending away our top athletes in the other disciplines to get special attention overseas. This must be done as a rule, annually, and not something that is pursued in a sporadic or ad hoc fashion.
Another thing the JAAA could do is create bigger incentive packages for those who do well outside of the sprints. How about offering a substantial monetary reward for high-school students and their coaches who come close to world standards in, say, the 800m or the 1500m. The reason we don't do well in those events is that, in Jamaica, glamour doesn't surround those disciplines. Therefore, neither coaches nor athletes take the longer distances as seriously as we should.
Rather than just bemoaning that fact, we ought to do something about it so that our talented high-school athletes can see genuine benefits in competing outside the sprints. If we don't do that, we will be perennially celebrating our sprinters at the Olympics, while continuing to wonder about stillborn opportunities elsewhere.
Over to you, JAAA.
Sportscaster Orville Higgins is the 2011 winner of the Hugh Crosskill/Raymond Sharpe Award for Sports Reporting. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/2...cleisure3.html
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