Champs Begins Tomorrow

It’s the eve of the biggest high schools track and field meet in the world, the 114th ISSA Grace Kennedy/Boys and Girls Championships at the National Stadium.

101 boys teams and 97 girls will compete over five gruelling days of competition starting tomorrow and culminating on Saturday with 43 finals….in total 88 finals will be contested over the five days.

Kingston College are the defending boys champions and Hydel High will put the defense of their girls title on the line.

Coach Leeford Grant guided K.C to their 34th hold on the Mortimer Geddes trophy last year and he told Nationwide Sports today that he has the tools to repeat.

However he says they’ll take it event by event and do the math as they go along.

K.C scored 366 points last year and beat Jamaica College by 67 points.

Grant says his boys have put in a great deal of work heading into the event and he’s expecting them to fight all the way to the end.

Hydel became the 13th team to win the girls title in their 13th year of competing at Champs, but will be hard pressed to hold on to their crown.

Hydel scored 279 points last year and beat Edwin Allen by just two points.

Coach Cory Bennett says they will go in with the same approach as they did last year where they don’t think too much about winning the title

Corey Bennett.

Sponsors Grace Kennedy will award 202-Thousand dollars to any school whose athlete breaks a 200m record at the championships.