More events for Inter-schools opening day as contest looms

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Friday’s opening day of this year’s Coca Cola Inter-schools Track & Field Championships, will feature added events as organisers seek to reduce the amount of time spent at the YASCO Sports Complex on the primary competition days of Saturday and Sunday.
Director of Sports, Heather Samuel-Daley, said heats for a number of the longer events will now happen on the opening day, which is free to the general public.
“Friday is when we have the heats or the eliminations for the 100, 200 and 400 but this year we are including the 4×1 relay and the 800. What we are trying to avoid in the two last events we mentioned, the 4×1 and 800, is that because there are so many persons registered for the 800, sometimes we have to do two heats and it poses a problem; because time finals for a meet of this quality, we don’t want to have time finals for any major events,” she said.
“We are going to choose, from the eliminations the top eight persons to go into the finals. It’s the same thing for the relays where usually we have 15 to 16 schools and all of them want to be a part of the relays,” she added.
The Ministry, Daley said, will also seek to continue the trend of providing winning schools with monetary prizes.
“In the past we have had monetary prizes given to the winners and this year we are hoping that it continues. We are still finalizing the price…but definitely, the winning schools will get something [monetary] this year,” she said.
“We do appreciate that these schools spend a lot of money preparing for the national inter-schools championships, for basketball, netball and for cricket. So this is our way of showing the schools that we do care and we appreciate the fact that they have taken the sport so seriously and we want to give back,” Daley added.
The former national sprinter also urged schools and their athletes utilizing the government school buses for transportation to get to, and from the YASCO Sports Complex to adhere to pick-up times as the buses will be on a tight schedule.
“We have been working very closely with the transport board and for the last couple of years we have not had so much of a problem. What the problem usually is, in terms of the transportation, is that when we ask athletes to be at the pick-up point at a particular time and of course the busses are going to be there on time, sometimes the students are not there at the particular time and the busses would leave them,” she said.
“We are asking schools and athletes to be reminded that the buses are there to pick up at a particular time and they will move five minutes later if nobody is there,” the Director said.
The event will start at 2pm on all days and carries an admission fee of $10 on Saturday and Sunday.
The Antigua Grammar School (AGS) will defend the men’s title while Princess Margaret School will defend the women’s title.

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