Tony Becca
ON FRIDAY, in my column which appeared in this newspaper, I congratulated the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) on its stand on academic and sport in schools and throughout the day.
Certainly in the early morning and late afternoon, my telephone hardly stopped ringing - and the people at the other end of the line were not congratulating me on what I had written.
Surprisingly, to me at least, every single one of the callers was lambasting me for supporting ISSA and wanted me to know how I could pass myself off as a sport person, and yet I am supporting a move that is aimed at preventing the country's talented young sportsmen from participating in school sports.
Well, I am not going to back off one inch and I am not going to back off because of many reasons, but more so because of my interest in the all-round development of young people in sport.
Commitment to academics
ISSA, through its president Clement Radcliffe, has said that it intends to back up its commitment to academic achievement as part of its development of the athletes. It has said that students in both the Manning Cup and daCosta Cup football competitions will have to have at least four subjects with a 45 per cent pass rate and will have to have an attendance record of 80 per cent before they can represent their schools. Those requirements are more than reasonable and, as a Jamaican who wants to see Jamaicans becoming more and more educated and properly trained, who wants to see Jamaicans becoming more and more qualified, who wants to see Jamaicans from all walks of life become more independent and one who wants to see Jamaica flourish as a country, I support ISSA 100 per cent.
And although these things are important, my support for ISSA has nothing to do with the fact that a school is a place where one goes to learn, that as important as sport and recreation are, everyone who goes to school should go there to learn, that Jamaica is short of schools - certainly of high schools and of teachers, and that those who want to learn should not be denied a place in school, a chance to learn, by those who do not want to learn - by those who go to school, or rather are registered at a school, simply to play football or cricket, to run, jump or throw.
It is no secret, for example, that some footballers at some schools do not even know the name of the headmaster or the headmistress. In fact, while it may not be so now, once upon a time, in the days when I covered schoolboy football, some footballers did not even know the names of some of the players on their own team.
My support for ISSA stems from four things.
The first one is the belief that everyone who goes to school should come out better off, educationally, than when he went there - and it does not matter whether he is a talented footballer, a talented cricketer or a talented runner.
A school is a school, and while it should provide recreation for all its students, while it should, if possible, encourage the development of a talent in sport, it certainly is not a sports club.
The second one is the belief that regardless of how talented one is or may be, that talent will never ever be beneficial to anyone unless he with the talent is bright enough, for example, to think, to reason, to understand things like angles and pace on a football field and, especially as far as defenders are concerned, to read, to anticipate the opposing player's next move.
The third one is that everyone should always prepare for the rainy day, and apart from the fact that it is not every talent that becomes a success, financially at that, regardless of how talented one may be, it only takes one injury to derail a career and to leave the unfortunate sportsman at the mercy of society - and more so if, educationally, he is unable to cope.
Few become rich
Apart from the fact that a sportsman's life is limited and that after he has finished his days in the sun, he needs to find something to do, number four is that of the many athletes, the hundreds and the thousands who pass through our school system, few, and a very few at that, make it to the top and become rich - and hardly any of them so rich that they do not need to do anything for the rest of their lives.
And then there is the reality that as important as a successful athlete is to the psyche of a nation - and especially so to nations like ours, in the final analysis, and regardless of what some may think, when it comes to the wider society - to the health, education and welfare of the people, doctors and nurses, teachers, judges and good politicians are more important than world beaters in sport.
Once gain, thank you ISSA for your stance. We need our sportsmen and sportswomen, but even if they are not A students, for a better Jamaica we need them to at least be able to read and to write, to add and to subtract.
