Sponsors missing from ‘good’ junior high school football season
Published:Wednesday | December 14, 2022 | 1:40 AMLivingston Scott/Gleaner Writer
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CHAIRMAN OF junior football competitions at the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA), Orrett Wallace, said the junior schoolboy football season, which concludes this Thursday at St Elizabeth Technical High School, has been a very...
CHAIRMAN OF junior football competitions at the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA), Orrett Wallace, said the junior schoolboy football season, which concludes this Thursday at St Elizabeth Technical High School, has been a very exciting one.
However, the Foga Road High School principal believes the junior football competitions would be more attractive if they had sponsors.
Speaking to The Gleaner at the final of the urban area under-14 and under-16 finals at Calabar on Monday, Wallace said: “It has been an exciting year and we look forward to next year. Hopefully, next year we will have bigger and better junior schoolboy football competitions.
“Although we don’t have a sponsor for our junior football leagues, we are hoping to have a sponsor next year and with a sponsor things will be bigger and better for them.”
He noted that this season, a lot more schools participated in the junior competitions, ticking a lot of the competitions’ boxes.
“It’s a very satisfying season from ISSA standpoint. We just finished the 2021 season in June but this is the first regular season after the pandemic.
“We had more schools participating this year than normal. In a regular under-16, under-14 season we would have roughly 50 to 60 schools but this year we had 90 schools in under-16.
“So we couldn’t play home and away, we only played single games in the first round. We also had a lot of schools that wanted to get back in, and this is a way to get the boys fully back into the school system,” he continued.
“Also the recruiter for the (national) under-17s was at Foga Road High School last week when they played the rural final and today (Monday) he is here again to see the talent pool the schools have to offer, to make the national team.”
The All-Island U16 finals between St Elizabeth Technical (STETHS) and Campion, and the u14 final between STETHS and Jamaica College will be played on Thursday at STETHS, and Wallace expects the final day to epitomise the season they’ve had.
“It will be an exciting day, looking to the all-island finals later this week. STETHS won both the rural area under-16 and under-14 titles. They will face JC in the u14s and Campion, who will be there for the first time, in the u16s. So let us see on Thursday who the real champions of junior schoolboy football are. And it should be as exciting as the rest of the competition to date,” he concluded.