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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><SPAN class=TopStory>Hailing ISSA</SPAN><SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>
Saturday, December 02, 2006
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<P class=StoryText align=justify>It's easy to take for granted that which we have known all our lives. That's true for people, organisations, even belief systems.<P class=StoryText align=justify>It certainly is true for the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA), that remarkable body directed by school principals that has run high school sports since 1910.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Let's stop and think about it. When National Hero Norman Washington Manley, arguably the most complete Jamaican schoolboy athlete ever, ran record times in winning the 100- yard, 220-yard and 440-yard races among other victories at the Boys' Championships of 1911, ISSA was in charge.<P class=StoryText align=justify>And when Manley's son Douglas clocked 10 seconds to equal his father's 100-yard record in 1939, beating Herb McKenley - destined to become one of the great track athletes of all time - ISSA was in charge.<P class=StoryText align=justify>In truth, ISSA and its annual boys' and girls' championships that have instilled a culture of high-level competition among our young athletes from an early age, probably constitute the single most important reason for Jamaica's extraordinarily consistent level of excellence in track athletics on the international stage.<P class=StoryText align=justify>From McKenley and Arthur Wint to the likes of Donald Quarrie, Lennox Miller, Merlene Ottey, Juliet Cuthbert, Deon Hemmings and to our current crop that includes Veronica Campbell, Sherone Simpson and Usain Bolt, every generation of Jamaican athletes has been indebted to the ISSA-run competitions.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The story is much the same in other sports. For organised schoolboy cricket, for example, which was led to begin with by the Sunlight Cup starting round about 1916 and schoolboy football, which began with the Olivier Shield in 1906 and the Manning Cup in 1914.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Today, ISSA, with a paid, permanent staff of four, has 160 member schools participating in a range of sports including track and field, cricket, football (boys and girls), netball, basketball, tennis, table tennis, swimming, hockey etc. For the traditional mainstream team activities such as football, cricket and netball, in which more than 90 per cent of high schools are involved, as well as several of the other sports, leagues and tournaments have to be organised in different age groups - at under-19, under-16, under-15, under-14, under-13 levels.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The remarkable thing is that ISSA has been able year after year - with only the odd hitch here and there - to run these competitions at a level comparable to the most efficient of the dedicated sporting associations.<P class=StoryText align=justify>In the process, this schools association has been able to fill a void that in much of the developed sporting world is the preserve of dedicated publicly and privately funded sports academies and professional clubs.<P class=StoryText align=justify>All of which is not to say that ISSA may not have gotten some things wrong.<P class=StoryText align=justify>But as we come to the conclusion of what appears to be another successful schoolboy football season, we think it appropriate that we hail this great organisation for a job well done for close to 100 years.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Certainly, we should take stock and stop taking it for granted.