Friday, December 12, 2008

Happy days will soon be here again for Track & Field at Excelsior. At least that is the dream as the alumni chapters  in New York & Florida have donated close to J$100,000, combined, to help sponsor the Wesley Powell Development Track Meet.

The 10th staging of the Jamaica Amateur Athletic (JAAA)-sanctioned meet, Saturday December 13, 2008, at the Courtney Walsh Oval at XLCR, had hit a snag after a number of the traditional corporate sponsors had decided to cut back in the wake of the global economic meltdown.

In stepped the New York based Excelsior Alumni Association (USA) Inc and the Excelsior Alumni Association of Florida to help fill the breach.

Principal Thanks Alumni

“We are grateful to the Alumni for the support because the staging of this meet, which is in its 10th year, is a good way to celebrate the life and work of the Hon. Wesley Powell” Mrs. Allison Peart, Acting Principal, said in thanking the alumni.

“The Wesley Powell Track Meet is in keeping with Mr. Powell's vision of linking sports and other extra curricula activities as a critical part of the education process”

Plans to Revitalize Athletics

Mrs. Peart noted that XLCR used to be a force to contend with in Track & Field and identified the annual Wesley Powell Development Track Meet as part of the long term strategic vision of restoring the school to a position of prominence because the Track and Field program has fallen on hard times in recent years.

Gone are the days when XLCR produced Olympians and other national representatives such as Dr. Arthur Wint, Dr. Andrea Bruce, Debra Byfield, Errol Stewart, Gregory Haughton, Neville Myton, Leighton Young, Marcia Swaby, Richard Hardware among a long list of prominent athletes. Many of these athletes represented Jamaica at the senior level while still enrolled in school - such was the strength of XLCR's track program.

Much of that is now a distant memory as, for years, the once stellar track & field program has been threatened with quietly fading into oblivion because of a combination of lack of interest, motivation and sponsorship.

With XLCR unable to mount a team to perform creditably at Champs, and so qualify to compete in the annual Penn Relays Festival in Philadelphia, alumni in the diaspora have been reduced to adopting and cheering for any team sporting the green and gold standard of Excelsior.

All that will hopefully soon change in light of the planned launch of a structured program to help revitalize the sport of  Track and Field at the school.