An­na-Lee Wal­cott, head coach of the de­fend­ing over­all cham­pi­ons of the Sec­ondary Schools Track and Field (SSTF) Re­lay Fes­ti­val, To­co Sec­ondary says her ath­letes will be com­ing to give off their best ef­fort de­spite be­ing un­der­pre­pared.

The Re­lay Fes­ti­val makes a re­turn to­day at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo from 1.30 pm af­ter a two-year hia­tus due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and for the first time will fea­ture Caribbean rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the form of two schools each from the world and re­gion­al track and field pow­er­house Ja­maica, along with Bar­ba­dos and Guyana who will each be rep­re­sent­ed by two teams (Boys) and (Girls).

When the Cham­pi­onship was last held in 2019 at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um in Mal­abar, To­co Sec­ondary School de­fend­ed its ti­tle as the over­all cham­pi­on from 26 schools.

To­co Sec­ondary con­test­ed all 29 events and tal­lied 236 points hav­ing won three events (Boys 4x800m Open, Mixed Un­der-13 4x100m, Mixed Un­der-13 4x200m), while Bish­op Anstey High School (BAHS) was sec­ond with 180 points, and Queen's Roy­al Col­lege (QRC), third with 178 points.

QRC's ran away with the boys U-15 4x200m, Over-17 4x200m, O-17 4x100m, and O-17 4x400m to tal­ly 178 points and the top po­si­tion in the Boys Di­vi­sion with St An­tho­ny's Col­lege sec­ond with 102 points, fol­lowed by Fa­ti­ma Col­lege with 92 points while among the Girls' Bish­op Anstey copped the ti­tle boost­ed by their gold medals in the U-15 4x200m, U-17 4x200m, and 800m sprint med­ley Open, ahead of To­co Sec­ondary (118) and Ari­ma Cen­tral Sec­ondary (64).

This time around, To­co Sec­ondary along with the 46 oth­er lo­cal school teams will have to fend off the chal­lenges of Christ Church Foun­da­tion (Bar­ba­dos), Guyana Schools (Guyana), St Michael’s School (Bar­ba­dos), and the top schools from the Ja­maica Boys and Girls Cham­pi­onships last year, Kingston Col­lege (boys), and Ed­win Allen High (girls).

In an­nounc­ing the plans for this year's event at a me­dia brief­ing held on Mon­day, Joseph Brew­ster, pres­i­dent of the SSTF said there will be added treat for lo­cals as the Ed­win Allen High School will fea­ture T&T's na­tion­al ath­lete Natasha Fox who spe­cialis­es in 400m and 400m hur­dles, and hails from Point Fortin.

For the Re­lay Fes­ti­val, Brew­ster said com­pe­ti­tion is ex­pect­ed to be con­test­ed in the 4x100m, 4x200m, 4x400m, and 4x800m and med­ley re­lays with win­ning re­lay teams in the 4x100m and 4x400m qual­i­fy­ing for the Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships.

The Re­lay Fes­ti­val this year al­so takes on an added bonus be­cause the "Top Eight" schools at the Re­lay Fes­ti­val will qual­i­fy to rep­re­sent their schools in the Re­lays at the Na­tion­al Track and Field Cham­pi­onship card­ed for the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um, Ba­co­let, To­ba­go, March 1-2.

Speak­ing on the eve of the event Wal­cott, the aunt of T&T's two-time Olympic Games medal win­ner Keshorn Wal­cott said, "Our team is re­group­ing af­ter the two-year COVID-19 lock­down and we will be go­ing there and try­ing our best with what lim­it­ed prepa­ra­tion we have been able to achieve".

She ex­plained, "We have a lot of our ath­letes who weren't able to train due to a lack of re­sources be­ing avail­able to us.

"We have not had ac­cess to our play­ing field at To­co for the bet­ter part of two years and more be­cause it was dam­aged dur­ing some con­struc­tion that took place at the school, and we were not able to prop­er­ly train and pre­pare our ath­letes.

Verona Davis-Mod­este, Prin­ci­pal of To­co Sec­ondary added: "Our ath­letes have no field for train­ing be­cause it was dur­ing the con­struc­tion of the tem­po­rary build­ing to house stu­dents which was in 2021.

"The field was not suit­able for the ath­letes to train af­ter­ward as there were a lot of un­even ar­eas and holes, which are dan­ger­ous to the ath­letes and while we have com­plaints to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties about it on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions, our com­plaints have fall­en on deaf ears."

"So while we are nor­mal­ly among the con­tenders at these com­pe­ti­tions, our ex­pec­ta­tions this time around are not that high," said Davis-Mod­este.

In ad­di­tion to the com­pe­ti­tion schools, some of the lo­cal clubs are al­so ex­pect­ed to send for­ward teams to com­pete at to­day's event.

2023 Sec­ondary Schools Track & Field Re­lay Fes­ti­val:

Over­seas par­tic­i­pants: Christ Church Foun­da­tion (Bar­ba­dos), Ed­win Allen High (Ja­maica), Guyana Schools (Guyana), Kin­ston Col­lege (Ja­maica), St Michael’s School (Bar­ba­dos)

Schools en­tered in meet man­ag­er so far:

Barataria North, Barataria South, Bar­rack­pore West Sec, Blan­chisseuse High, Cunu­pia, Diego Mar­tin North Sec, Holy Cross Col­lege, Holy Name Con­vent (PoS), Iere High, Mal­abar Sec, Mir­a­cle Min­istries Pen­te­costal High, Mt Hope Sec, New But­ler As­so­ciates Col­lege, Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege (San F’do), Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do West Sec, San Juan North Sec, St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege, St James Sec, St Joseph’s Col­lege, Tran­quil­i­ty Sec, Williamsville Sec, Bish­op Anstey High, Bish­op’s High To­ba­go, Bon Air High, Ch­agua­nas North Sec, Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, Ma­son Hall Sec, Ma­yaro, North­gate Col­lege, Pen­te­costal Light and Life, Rox­bor­ough Sec, San Fer­nan­do Cen­tral Sec, San­gre Grande Sec, Sig­nal Hill Sec, Spey­side Sec, St Bene­dict’s Col­lege, St Fran­cis Boys Col­lege, St Joseph Sec, To­co Sec, Trin­i­ty Col­lege East, Trin­i­ty Col­lege Mo­ka, Union Clax­ton Bay Sec.