‘We will not be short’
JC coach sounds warning with competitive Champs unit
Published:Monday | February 17, 2025 | 9:54 AMGregory Bryce/Staff Reporter
JAMAICA COLLEGE (JC) track and field head coach Duane Johnson has sent an early message to his rivals, saying his team will enter this year’s ISSA GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championships with the intention of competing in every final on schedule.
Johnson, who succeeded veteran coach Neil Harrison at the Old Hope Road-based school, is gearing up for a strong performance in his first stint as JC’s head coach.
He says his priority this season is ensuring that the school is competitive across all disciplines in a bid to eliminate any weakness in the squad.
“Instead of specialising athletes in particular events, I am using the approach in the early season where everybody is doing everything so that we can better fill out the various areas of the team,” Johnson explained.
“There is a lot of strength in the team this year. You can find a few weak areas that we are still working on right now, but the aim is to really show up as strong as possible.”
The idea is to have the programme develop a wide array of talented athletes, who can compete across multiple events.
He says the expectation come March is for JC to be able to field two top athletes in every final in the five-day high school track and field meet.
“We took this approach in the early season where in all the events, we work together and did some testing so that we can spread the talent right across the team. When we show up at Champs come March 25, we will not be short in any area at all,” he says.
“Champs has 42 events, so the key really is to ensure that in all 42 events that we have at Champs, we can show up with two quality athletes in each event and score points.”
JC’s school motto, ‘Floreat Collegium, Fervet Opus in Campis’, which translates to ‘May the College flourish, work is burning in the fields’ is especially exemplified by Johnson’s programme this year.
He is highly confident of his team’s chances of closing the gap on their main rival, reigning champions Kingston College (KC).
For the last three years, JC has finished a distant second to the boys from North Street, with last year’s points tally seeing them fall 57 points behind the champions.
Based on what he has seen both in training and in the early season, Johnson is confident that JC will put up a better fight this time around.
“I rate our progress pretty high because a lot of the stuff we have done so far would have been a lot more successful than previous years, so we’re feeling pretty good about our chances. Our goal really is to show up at Champs and compete for this championships,” he said.
“I think the last few years we did finish second, however, it was a distant second. Our intent — even if don’t come out victorious though, we intending to give it our best shot — is that we can be able to compete for it.”