This is March 27, 2010, the final day of the 100th year of Jamaica’s Boys and Girls Athletics Championships (popularly known as Champs) at the National Stadium, the heart and soul of track & field in the country and the “nursery” that current and former stars have passed through.

Fittingly dubbed “Champs 100”, the centenarian’s birthday brought together family, friends and fans to celebrate and will leave everyone on a high for a very long time to come. Although several records tumbled, there was no single star whose performance was extraordinary by Champs standard. Jazeel Murphy, the 15-yr-old, unbeaten until Saturday and whom many predict as the next Jamaican sprint-double sensation, opted out of the 100m and managed only third in the 200m due to hamstring worries. Etched in many a mind, however, was the sheer grit, pride, determination and teamwork of the youth, as well as some stellar team leadership that was on display.

On the eve of the 4-day championships, the event was ushered in with a bang -- a spectacular two-hour opening show that some liken to an Olympic opening ceremony. And leading up to the day of the show was the release of CHAMPS 100, a 283-page glossy, exciting and colorful book with 99 pages of appendix, which documents the 10 decades of the event that began way back in 1910 and had only one break in 1944, when it was suspended due to security concerns.

Champs, formerly held separately as Boys Champs and Girls Champs, has always had a lure that sucks in track & field lovers, but this year’s promised more -- a special magic that pulled the curious from all corners of the globe. After all, it wasn’t just another Champs; it was the centenary of an event that Jamaicans live and die for, and ISSA (Inter-Secondary School Sports Association), the organizing body, and corporate giant and title sponsors GraceKennedy were pulling out all the stops to make this one a cut above the rest.

And then there were the early signs that tickets could go quickly. Hotel bookings were increasing early and many fans in the Jamaican Diaspora were set to go home. In Kingston, hours before the sun raised its head, patrons lined up to buy prized grandstand tickets that would go on sale at 10 a.m. Many who thought they were the proverbial early birds that catch the worm missed it and walked away furious when the tickets they wanted were sold out within one hour.

Asafa Powell and the Munro College Class 2 4x1 winning team.

Besides Jamaicans making the ‘pilgrimage’ home, the event’s magnet had a pulling power that reached as far as South Africa. Geraldine Pillay, a native of that country, went to Champs 100 and took 28 students as well as officials from Willowridge High School in Pretoria, South Africa to witness the vibe and high-caliber performance. The former sprinter lived and trained in Jamaica in 2007 under Stephen Francis as a member of the MVP Track Club, training ground of Asafa Powell, Shelly-Ann Fraser, Brigitte Foster and company.
 
Pillay, now the head coach at Willowridge, told the media that the idea for the visit came about after she saw Champs in 2007 and observed the talent and passion displayed by young Jamaican athletes.

"I thought it was a good opportunity for high school students to come and experience not only the vibes around the preparation that goes into it, but [what goes on] on the track and off the track.”

She also believes coming to the event would give the young athletes an opportunity to experience world-class performances and to see and meet some of the world's best athletes. Not surprisingly, the contingent was amazed by the greatest high school track & field event in the world.

Caribbean-American Olympian and World Championships gold medalist Lauryn Williams flew into the island from Florida to see it herself, stating that former Trinidadian sprinter and current NBC sportscaster Ato Bolden (Jamaican mother) invited her to go see the event. Bolden himself was bitten by the Champs bug some years ago.

Bridgeport’s Jazeel Murphy, center, makes it to the line behind Odean Skeen (left) of Wolmer’s and Delano Williams of Munro.

The overseas media have been paying attention since Jamaica’s performance in Beijing. A host of foreign media including the BBC, Sports Illustrated, Reuters, US Fitness, Popeye Magazine (Japan) and FHM and Milk Magazine (China) flocked to Champs this year as if it were the staging of the World Junior/World Youth Games. So, too, did eagle-eyed coaches from US colleges, scouting for athletes to offer scholarships to compete for their schools.

For years, (Boys) Champs was about archrivals Kingston College and Calabar High School which have waged fierce competition for supremacy. This year, however, many argued early that such rivalry had been redundant and that the time was ripe for another school to take the crown. Wolmer’s Boys School at Heroes Circle in Kingston, an institution known for its academic strength and soccer power, had won the first Champs; and so the romanticism began to grow that it would be nice for them to win again, 100 years later.

But coming full circle was not a plan with which Wolmer’s started out.  “We never really set out to win the 100th Champs,” said Wolmer’s coach David Riley, pointing out that it was after they started preparation when they realized that this year was a special occasion.

The w inning teams come face-to-face.

The last time Wolmer’s Boys held the title was in 1956, one year before the girls’ edition was inaugurated. Since then, the school has helped produce the likes of Michael Frater, the 2005 World Games 100m silver medalist and 2008 Olympics and 2009 World Games sprint relay gold medalist as well as his coach Steven Francis, a walking brains box and former member of that institution’s Schools Challenge Quiz team, who later graduated from university with first class honors.  Incidentally, Frater was part of the CVM-TV team that broadcast Champs 100 nationally. Wolmer’s Girls, the sister school, helped mold 2008 Olympics and 2009 Worlds gold medalist Shelly-Ann Fraser.

Until late in the afternoon on the last day, both Wolmer’s and many-time winner Calabar were trading the lead with each other. Then news broke that they were tied at 198.5 points with one event remaining: the exciting 4x4 relay. Both teams were in the final. It didn’t matter at that point who won the race; what mattered was that any one of these two teams that came ahead of the other would win Champs and the coveted Mortimer Geddes Trophy. The relays offered 12 points to win, 10 for 2nd, 8 for 3rd, 6 for 4th, 5 for 5th, 4 for 6th, 3 for 7th and 2 for 8th.

Prior to the boys 4x4, an almost similar scenario existed for the girls. Holmwood Technical High was already beating back Edwin Allen Comprehensive’s fierce sustained challenge for the girls crown; now they were leading Edwin Allen by fewer than nine points going into the mile relay, the final race for them. To win the championships, Holmwood needed to avoid placing too far behind its rival. Edwin Allen, on the other hand, needed to win the race with Holmwood way down the line.

With a solid strategy for victory, the school from the chilly hills of Manchester used the formidable Michael Johnson-style Petra Fanty on the third leg and the gutsy 15-year-old Chris-Ann Gordon, who earlier won the 400m and 800m in her class, on anchor. Gordon never faltered and Holmwood won the race and took the championships for the eight year in a row, scoring 273.33 points while Edwin Allen finished second with 258 points.

As the boys’ final race of the championships loomed, the Calabar-Wolmer’s points standing did nothing to calm the nerves of the shouting, stomping spectators and the temperature in the stadium rose to fever pitch. With possible victory for either in sight, the packed stadium hardly paid attention to the requests to be quiet for the start of the race. But the final eight managed to hear the starter’s call and settled into their blocks.

From lane one outward, the lineup included the best in schoolboy quarter-milers representing the eight teams: Wolmer’s with team captain Dwayne Extol on anchor; Jamaica College; Kingston College; Vere Technical, the 2010 Gibson Relay champions; Munro College; Calabar with Ricardo Powell on lead-off; Herbert Morrison and Camperdown.

Extol entered the final turn for home ahead of the field before Vere Technical’s runaway anchorman stepped around him with ease and opened the gap to the finish line. But it was Vere that won the race, not Calabar, and so Extol in second place raised his arms in victory on realizing that Wolmer’s had captured the Mortimer Geddes trophy, symbol of athletics superiority for Jamaica's schoolboy athletics.

                                                             All Photos by Desmond G. Palmer