Local universities still a good option for student athletes
JUST LAST week, an article in THE
STAR titled ‘US collegiate still the best option’ quoted veteran coach and president of Racers Track Club, Dr The Hon Glen Mills, as suggesting that attending overseas (I am assuming US) universities is a better option for Jamaicans who want to be fulltime athletes and students. He made some observations which are worth examining.
I have known Mills for a while now and have worked very closely with him, while I was head of The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, sports programme. In fact, he was instrumental in the development of the university’s track programme, which at one point rivalled the major tertiary institutions locally. I also understand his position as we have had similar discussions around the challenges student athletes face locally.
LONG-TERM GOALS
I have long argued that some athletes are better suited to train overseas, while others could benefit more by staying home. So where I agree with the worldrenowned coach is that some of our talented juniors should choose overseas or local programmes based on their long-term goals. A lot has changed at the Mona campus since I left, so I cannot speak for the current administration, but what I do know is that part of the earlier struggle was to get the management to agree to wholesale changes that were not necessarily in line with the university’s policies and procedures. This created several challenges for athletes and support personnel such as Mills. In many instances, athletes could not train in an accommodating
‘The truth is we may never be able to match overseas systems at the professional track and field level because of finances, but we can adjust our programmes to still produce worldclass athletes, and even a developing model for many other countries.’
environment. Improvements were made while I was there, but obviously a lot more needed to happen. Therefore, I can understand aspects of Mills’ arguments in this regard.
Where I fundamentally disagree with Mills is the broad-based suggestion that it is more difficult to do both training and academics in local universities. As someone who spent over a decade in our local collegiate system, I can safely say that some of the comments attributed to Mills do not represent the total picture. If this was the case, we would not have seen several student athletes completing their undergraduate degrees and competing at the highest level. Additionally, based on my knowledge of other tertiary institutions such as G.C. Foster College of Physical Education and Sport, and the University of Technology, Jamaica specifically, I am not sure if their experience is similar to Mills’.
ACCOMMODATING ATHLETES’ TRAINING
In many of these institutions, faculty and coaches work together in the athletes’ interest, oftentimes adjusting to accommodate the athletes’ training and competition schedule.
I think the issues in the local tertiary institutions are many, and not all are as accommodating as overseas universities, but the current system also helps to mould and shape many student athletes. If you look on the most recent senior teams, you would have seen several current and past student athletes from local universities, including Shashalee Forbes, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Jaheel Hyde, Fedrick Dacres, Traves Smikle and Hansle Parchment, and many others competing for Team Jamaica. In other sports such as netball, the Sunshine Girls team is made up of majority student athletes; cricket now has several athletes in the Jamaica team, while UWI has several players involved with the Red Stripe Premier League football competition.
Our tertiary institutions have a far way to go in terms of creating a structure that fully accommodates student athletes. The cost is also prohibitive, as many tertiary institution administrators see other competing expenses as more important than investing directly in sport development.
Our tertiary institutions represent the bedrock of sport in the region. I am sure The Hon Mills remembers that we have had decades of challenges with student athletes, who have also gone overseas and have had similar challenges of completing their academic programmes and/or suffer burnout from the collegiate circuit. So, there are challenges all around.
It is not that going overseas is the better option for everyone, but rather there may be better facilities and support systems overseas. This has always been the case, but it has never prevented us from recruiting and keeping local talent at home and training them to become world-beaters. The truth is we may never be able to match overseas systems at the professional track and field level because of finances, but we can adjust our programmes to still produce world-class athletes, and even a developing model for many other countries. Dalton Myers is a sports consultant and administrator.Emailfeedbacktodaltonsmyers@ gmail.com or tweet @daltonsmyers.