Hartley Neita, Contributor
IN PREVIOUS years, the names of our male athletes were listed before the females when the Olympic teams were announced.
If you cast your minds back to the late 1940s and early 1950s, the names of Herb McKenley, Arthur Wint, George Rhoden and Les Laing came before Kathleen Russell, Cynthia Thompson and the other young female athletes.
In subsequent years it was George Kerr, the Spence twins, Keith Gardner, Ernle Haisley, Ossie Lyons, Lennox Miller, Denis Johnson, and then Don Quarrie.
And then the women took over from the beginning of the 1980s. The stars became Grace Jackson, Kathy Rattray, the Turner sisters, Merlene Ottey, and Juliet Cuthbert.
Now, except for James Beckford, national attention is focused on Deon Hemmings, Beverly McDonald, Lorraine Graham, Veronica Campbell, Merlene Frazer, Juliet Campbell, and Sandie Richards. Michelle Freeman, Lacena Golding, and others of the new group of female athletic stars.
This, I find, very interesting. For it is happening not only in athletics, it is also in swimming, in table tennis, and also lawn tennis where there are no more male stars such as the Leahong brothers Richard Russell and Lance Lumsden, with one top female, Ivy Cover-Ramsay, standing out like a lonely Venus. Now, the world- ranking Jamaican lawn tennis players are young Broderick and Richards.
Gender leadership
I am not a sociologist. But looking at this remarkable change in gender leadership in these and other spheres of activity in Jamaica, it seems to stem from the reducing influence of male role models for young boys in our society.
The consensus is that the absence of father figures in many homes is part of the problem.
Another is that in our schools, there seem to be now more headmistresses at the basic, preparatory, primary and secondary levels of education. In my early years, there were no female principals of the elementary schools in Clarendon. In Kingston there were two I can recall at that time, Edith Dalton James and Ethline Rhodd, while all the boys' secondary schools had male headmasters. Now women occupy this level.
One would say, however, that schools now have male athletic coaches. But boys do not see these coaches as having the same status of authority as the other members of the teaching staff. And so their influence appears to be less than what it should be.
These thoughts are thrown out based on only a casual observation of the situation which exists in our schools, where our athletes are being formed. The factors involved are very confusing to me, and I would therefore welcome the views of the very knowledgeable sports writers and commentators.
