Excelsior girls confident of top-five finish

Former champions Excelsior High will be carrying the flag once again for the Corporate Area in the girls’ section of this year’s staging of the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championships.

The school from Mountain View finished sixth in the past two seasons, and they are confident of breaking into the top five this time around.

In 2017, they tallied 113 points and were only 12.5 points behind fifth-placed Vere Technical (125.5), and last year, it was even closer as Excelsior ended on 103.5 points to the Clarendon-based school’s 105.5 points.

With the absence of former head coach Michael Vassell, who is now working overseas, a new person will be at the top. Former Kingston College head coach Michael Russell, who for the past six years has been on the coaching staff at the Mountain View Avenue institution, is the man now at the helm of the girls’ programme, and he is very confident that Excelsior will finish in the top five.

“First, we have to ensure that the girls remain focused, and once this is done, it should be there. One thing we had to do is to look at some key areas that we never had representation in and try to ensure we are represented in these areas, and those are mainly in the middle distance. We made some effort to try and plug those gaps, and I believe this will help with us to improve our position,” he stated. “Excelsior is not one of those traditional firepower girls’ teams, and despite us winning the Corporate Area title for the past three years, we have not seen a trophy, but we are doing our own marketing and public campaign, and we just have to get out there and be visible, and people will see us. Our strength is all round, but the field is a bit stronger, especially in the jumps, and we do have good representation on the track, and we hope we can carry some good points, in addition to Ackera [Nugent] in the hurdles, and we do have fairly good relay squads.“

Russell is appealing to the Excelsior fans to come out and support the team at Champs 2019. “Our slogan for this year again is ‘top-five drive’, so we want our supporters to come out and witness us getting in the top-five position,” he said.