…AAG says event to be more streamlined and efficient for the athletes benefit

AS the athletics fraternity seek to embark on a new format for the National Schools Athletics Championship, president of the local governing body Aubrey Hutson says that this new proposed structure is geared towards better performances of athletes
‘We are putting serious structure in place, we caught a lot of the schools by surprise because a lot of them late entry and believe on the day of competition, they could bring a child and say look his class mate was supposed to run this event but take him out and put in this one, track and field don’t operate like that, track and field is very structured, so the whole system is geared towards better athletics.

Hutson says the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) which had managed the championship for more than 60 years has not indicated if they will play a role in the event this year but hopes this will change in the near future because they have an important role to play.
He noted that AAG is part of the team that will organise the Secondary Schools Championship.

After years of representation from various stakeholders about the non- alignment of the schools championship with the national and global calendar it was necessary for it to be adjusted t better cater to athlete’s development.
The championship is usually hosted around November-December when topically athletes are going into their off-season.

The Unit of Allied Arts headed by Nicholas Fraser proposed a plan to split the championship into primary and secondary schools champions and host it at a time more suited to the national and global athletics calendar with some other structural changes to the games.
The new format see all schools across Guyana carrying out their inter- house sports followed by an inter-school meets in every education district minus the inter-zones.
The winners from each event will move on to represent their respective schools at the National Inter-Schools level.

The district winners of each respective event, will then be joined by the next best 10 athletes to compete.
The schools’ championship is set to be hosted in March this year at the Leonora Track and Field Centre.