The Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) and its main sponsor Puma, visited the parish of Hanover on Friday and presented various food items and toiletries to student-athletes from hosts Rusea’s High School, Merlene Ottey High School, and Rhodes Hall High School.
All three institutions were badly affected by Hurricane Melissa. They are feverishly pushing to return to normality. “This is a wonderful initiative to give back to our athletes,” said beaming AnnaKay Lewis, a senior teacher at Rusea’s.
“The hurricane affected everybody, including our athletes. We welcome this support and we look forward for more as they work hard to represent the school at local, regional, and international competitions.
“As a school, we have suffered greatly and now we are operating on one campus instead of the usual two. Our athletes will have to rotate coming into school. This impacts not only education but the level of training they could put in, given regular circumstances. So we welcome this initiative from the JAAA and Puma.”
Olympian and Puma marketing manager for running, Juliet Campbell, was on hand to make the presentations.
“We have to show them that we care,” said Campbell.
“This is a gesture to remind the athletes not to abandon the sport, even with the current challenges.”
First vice-president of the JAAA, Ian Forbes, described Friday’s event as a ‘goodwill trip’.
“It is our responsibility to ensure that our stakeholders, including our student-athletes and teachers, are given a chance to train and compete well. We would like to level the playfield as best as possible when they compete against their peers who were not affected by the hurricane. We are also looking at other areas where we can help to get them to compete and realise their full potential,” said Forbes.
This is the first of at least two such visits to western Jamaica. The team will be back next weekend, this time in the parish of Westmoreland, which suffered extreme devastation from Melissa.
