Collegiate Athletes Lead Commonwealth Selections

Collegiate athletes Cejhae Greene and Jess St. John, headline a seven-member track & field team selected to carry the country’s flag at this year’s Commonwealth Games slated for 4-15 April in Queensland, Australia. Greene, who attends the University of Georgia where he recently set a new indoor record in the 60 metres, will contest the 100 metres sprint and headline the country’s 4X1 relay team. St. John, who is joined by high-jumper Priscilla Frederick as the only females in the team, will contest the shot-put.
The Kansas State University athlete recently threw a distance of 16.04 metres to achieve a personal best at a division meet in the USA. Coach of the team and former national athlete, Ted Daley, said he expects good performances from all athletes but believes Greene will achieve much this year. “We know that Cejhae has been running pretty well over the past two or three years and has run as fast as 10:01 seconds.
This year, he started out with a PR [Personal Record] in his first indoor meet and he has bettered that with the second race of the indoor season,” he said. “We always knew that Cejhae is a very strong finisher and if he is improving in 60 metres, it means therefore, his acceleration has improved and when you put that with the strong finish that we know he usually has, we are expecting that Cejhae will run under 10 seconds this year,” he added. The other members of the team are sprinters Jared Jarvis, Tahir Walsh, Coull Graham and Chevaughn Walsh.
Noticeably absent however is senior national sprinter and a key component of the country’s 4X1 relay team, Daniel Bailey, who has reportedly indicated that he is unavailable for the Games. Daley said his experience will be missed. “With the experience he has, he is always a welcomed addition to any one of our 4X1 teams. There are times, like when we went to Beijing, China, I had indicated to him that I can only be with the team up to the time when they enter the call room and he, with his experience, would have to take care of business while they are out there,” he said.
“He was the captain and he was able to talk to them while they were out there and got them to relax and so on and we went and we performed, making the finals of the World Championships,” Daley added. The team is set to leave for Australia in March.