Jamaica is world renowned for it’s track and field athletes. As a Jamaican, I have the honor of sharing in this heritage. Track and Field events make up a large part of Jamaican culture. Jamaicans attend track and field competitions as a form of recreation to watch competitors whether they may be from competing schools, competing clubs or organizations, or competing towns.
Every athlete dreams of being in the Olympics. As a child growing up in Jamaica, I also dreamed of one day representing Jamaica in the Olympics, however, that was not the path my life would take. Nothing can replace the feeling of pride to see other Jamaicans dominating the world stage in athletics. Usain Bolt, a Jamaican athlete born in Trelawney, Jamaica, has continued the Jamaican legacy of excelling in track and field internationally. He currently holds the Olympic record for being the fastest sprinter in history. He has been awarded nine (9) Olympic gold medals. He holds the world record for the 100m and 200m sprint event and is the only person in history to ever do so. Other Jamaicans who have represented our country and won Olympic medals include Donald Quarrie, Merlene Ottey, Asafa Powell, Veronica Campbell-Brown, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Elaine Thompson to name a few.
In Jamaica, our culture celebrates track and field and the virtues that are required to be an athlete, like, dedication, discipline, strength and perseverance. Every Jamaican athlete has a personal story of dedicating hours of time and energy almost every day to training and improving their technique in the various track and field events. It comes as a great insult to Jamaican athletes, when after all the hard work, extreme discipline and personal sacrifice that is put into training our bodies and preparing for the event, that people would suggest that our track and field abilities are due to performance enhanced drugs. The following is my personal story of my track and field school career in Jamaica.
I started doing track and field at elementary school and from an early age I started training in the evenings after school for track and field events. At my elementary school, Corinaldi Avenue Primary School, located in Montego Bay, Jamaica, I remember participating in school competitions. The winners were encouraged by the coaches to train for interschool competitions. I remember representing my school at “The Comets Relays”. Myself and my teammates used to train every evening after school at the Cornwall College High School Field. There we met other athletes from various schools all over Montego Bay also using the same field to train. I remember that the field had a seating area with about fifty steps. Our coach made us train for sprinting by timing us as we ran up those steps. I never forgot those steps. That was the hardest part of the training routine. I calves ached after running up and down those steps.
In high school, I continued doing track and field. I attended Herbert Morrison Technical High. My track and field practice routine was like this: Show up for training at 4:00pm, Do warm up exercizes and stretching, do one lap around a 400m field, jog down Alice Eldemire road, down Howard Cooke Boulevard, to this beach called “Dump up”, then turn around and jog back to school, do one more lap around the field. Sometimes we would jog up Westgate Hills and back to school. On other days we would jog to Freeport and then back to school. Sometimes I would show up to training without remembering to eat lunch. In my teenage, hyperactive mind, there was so much to do, I did not have time to eat. Our team did not have a dietician to advise the athletes on a proper diet, and the coach thought all the athletes had the common sense to eat before coming to training. There were many like me who sometimes forgot to eat. And there were many who just could not afford to buy lunch. But they showed up to training anyway. On that note I would like to talk about the miracle workers known as track coaches that worked at our school. There were always limited resources because the school just did not have the money to fund the track department. Yet with little or no resources, the coaches managed to produce athletes who were competitive at the regional and national level.
I remember when I won Champion Girl for the entire school. That was a great moment for me. Was I the fastest girl in the whole school? No. But I was the fastest in my category. The way to win Champion Girl was participation and I had unlimited amount of energy. I participated in 100m, 150m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 1500m track events. I also participated in long jump, high jump events and so I gained a lot of points which gave more points than the other female athletes in that particular year. How did I manage to participate in so many events, was it planned? Not most of the time, but there were a core group of runners who the coach would call on to run an event and I was one of them who would volunteer to run any event. Did I always win? No. But somehow I always managed to place in the top three and get either a Gold, Silver or Bronze medal.
The scenario usually went like this:
Coach: Nichole we cant find any one to run the 1500m race!
Me:But I just finished the 800m!
Coach: Just run this race and then you can relax.
Me:Ok.
Another Scenario:
Coach: Nichole we can’t find one of the runners to run in the 4 x 200m final, she didn’t show up, can you do it?
Me: But I just finished the 4 x 1 relay and I am hungry, I was just going to get something to eat.
Coach: Just run this race and then you can get something to eat. We really need someone for this race or else we will have to cancel the event
Me: OK (thinking about the food I was going to eat as soon as I finish).
Yet another scenario:
Coach: Nichole can you do the high jump?
Me: I didn’t really train for that event coach.
Coach: It’s Ok I understand…but just come do this event anyway because the person who was supposed to do it is sick.
Me: OK.
Volunteering to run any race made me very popular on the track and field team and in the entire school. Many people knew me because I showed up for every race.
Remember the core group of runners I mentioned earlier? These were a certain set of runners male and female, who would show up no matter how sick they were, no matter if they had not eaten, or even if they were not trained for a particular event. Just their willingness to volunteer, their confidence and camaraderie and how they encouraged their teammates no matter the situation, kept the group vibrant and active.
I was selected to represent Herbert Morrison at Western Girls Champ where I won the trophy for the best Class 4 female and I was selected to represent the Western region at the National Girls Champs in Kingston, Jamaica. When our track and field team showed up in Kingston, our competition from the other schools always informed us about how old our jerseys were and how we were wearing the same jersey since the school started in 1976. Let me talk a little more about the situation regarding equipment and track and field gear. There was little or none. I remember we received our jerseys the night before. I also remember that I had to wash the jersey, use needle and thread to sew up the jersey, and iron it to wear at the track meet the next day. We also had to share spikes. One pair of spikes was shared among everyone who shared the same shoe size. I remember that the coach told us that after we ran the race we should hurry up and run back to the starting line to give the spikes to the next person who was waiting on it to run their race. Inspite of all this, nothing could replace the feeling of pride when our team stood on the podium to collect our medals for winning a race or placing in the top three.
During my first year of college at the University of the West Indies, I signed up for the track and field team. At UWI, I stayed in the college dorms. That was quite an experience. My daily routine was like this:
At 4:00am the track team leader assigned to your dorm came knocking at the door. We would train by jogging to the field which was quite a distance from the dorms, and jogging around a section of the University known as “Ring Road”. We would do drills and work out which was timed to end at 6:00am at which time we returned to our dorms to get ready for class which started for me at 8:00am and ended at 5:00pm. After which I would go back to the dorm , shower, eat, do homework, get to bed by 12:00am, sometimes even 2:00am and then the cycle would repeat (yes they still came banging on my door at 4:00am) from Monday to Friday. Saturday and Sunday I slept the whole day, getting up only to shower and eat and do homework. Some Sundays, I would go to church. Church really helped to give me inspiration and strength to make it through the week. After the first semester at college, my grades really suffered. Again I was not eating properly, getting little or no sleep, too tired to concentrate in class. I spoke to a guidance counsellor. She asked me to define my priorities in life. She explained to me that the track and field training was like a full time job, and my classes were like another full time job. She advised me that I would have to choose. I knew that my family had spent a lot of money to pay for my tuition to go to college to get a degree, not to be a member of the track and field team, and so I had to make the painful decision to drop out of the track and field program. Of course my teammates encouraged me to stay in the program but I just couldn’t do it.
Looking back at my school track and field career, maybe if I had someone to guide me in proper nutrition, balancing schoolwork and athletics, I would have continued. My best years I think were during high school. To my dismay, twenty years after graduating from Herbert Morrison, I am being made to understand that the coaches have to still struggle with limited resources to produce Star athletes. Nothing much has changed since I have left. On that note, I would like to urge alumni members to donate towards the Sports department, in particular the track and field department. Let us support our athletes that help to place Herbert Morrison’s name big and bold on the Jamaican map. I would also like to urge anyone reading this article to support sports programs in your community. Sports really make a difference in the lives of everyone involved.
The story doesn’t end here, I have many more memories to share but I will have to continue another time.
