The Inter-Secondary Athletics Championships finished on Friday, 22 March, with John Gray High School taking home the title with 1,140.5 points, ahead of last year’s winner Clifton Hunter which finished with 1,074.5 points.
Over 550 athletes across 19 schools competed at the three-day event, held at the Truman Bodden Sports Complex, with Layman E. Scott High School emerging as the Small School Champion, after accumulating 323 points.
“This is one of the best meets where you can identify talent that will go on to CARIFTA, but before we get to that stage, we need to identify them at the primary level,” national track-and-field coach Kenrick Williams told the Compass.
“When I got to the Cayman Islands in 1996, there was an inter-secondary event going on and that was run by Jerry Harper, and then Jerry handed it over to the Department of Sports, and then it just evolved when Mr. Dalton Watler took over.”
This year’s event featured many of Cayman’s future national representatives in track and field earning podium places, others with breakout performances, and more than 20 meet records broken.
Donald Mitchell won the boys overall title in the under-13 age group alongside Jahriah Ngyou, who claimed the girls title for the U13. The U15 girls champion was DaQuana Howell and Jaysean Seymour won for the U15 boys.
In the U17s, Delora Johnson took the girls title and Prince Williams won for the boys. The Under-20 divisional titles went to Litzy Varela-Walton for the girls and DeAndre Beckford for the boys.
Williams said many of those top athletes can join the likes of Caymanian greats.
“Every one of the great athletes… that attended the Olympics, ran at the Inter-secondary,” he said. “Cydonie Mothersill, Ronald Forbes, Kemar Hyman and Shalysa Wray; they all ran at this championship. So, the importance of this is, we can produce athletes.”
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