Kingston College regrouping for 2014 ‘Champs’
By Dania Bogle
AFTER four years in the wilderness, Kingston College will be looking to improve their fortunes at the 2014 Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) Boys & Girls Athletic Championships in Kingston, Jamaica.
Kingston College last won a title in 2009 and has been doing progressively worse over the last few years finishing third in 2010, second in the 2011 and last year, and a distant third to Calabar and Jamaica College in 2013.
The team has also changed head coaches from Michael Russell, who led them from 2008 after the departure of Lennox Graham, to another past student, Orville Byfield, who was instrumental in JC’s ‘Champs’ victory in 2011.
Byfield, who is something of a ‘Champs’ legend himself, having won the Class One discus with a record in 1999 and also won the Class Two Shot Putt Discus double in 1997, is currently head of the Caribbean School of Sports Sciences at the University of Technology and holds a Masters degree in Sport Science from the International School of Physical Education and Sport in San Jose de las Lajas in Cuba.
Byfield, who graduated in 2006, told MilesplitJa that KC is in a new dispensation and that the changes will be felt once the new track and field season begins.
“I have planned a structure and the coaches are supporting me but at this time we are just a work in progress and as the season progresses we will see an improvement in the performance of the Kingston College athletes,” said Byfield.
“In the upcoming track season we will really see and test the plan in action and see what the outcome will be like.”
The school has lost the services of long jumper Clive Pullen but Byfield said that they are hoping to make up the gap.
“We have put plans in place (to deal with that). We want to have an overall improvement in everything. That’s the only way you can win a championship if you have everybody in the finals for every single event and then you can take it from there.
Carifta Games Under-17 200m winner Zharnel Hughes of Anguilla has enrolled in KC this year and Byfield believes that the youngster, who is training at the University of the West Indies (UWI) with the Glen Mills-steered Racers Track Club, can only add to the team’s fortunes.
“He is the Pan American Games champion… ran 10.38 seconds so I think he has a great of a chance as anyone out there at this point in time so next year with him becoming more mature in his event I think he will do very well.”