Sachin not ruled out of Champs – Walcott

Despite wanting to break into the top four of the boys’ section at the 2019 ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championship, St Elizabeth High School (STETHS) seems like they will have to do without the services of ace sprinter Sachin Dennis, who is yet to compete this season.

Coach Reynaldo Walcott told STAR Sports that he and his staff are managing the workload of the first-year Class One athlete who is coming back from an injury. But he was not prepared to rule Dennis out of Champs just yet.

Dennis has personal-best times of 10.20 seconds in the 100m, a time he blitzed to in the final of the Class Two boys’ 100m last year to erase Raheem Chambers’ 2014 mark of 10.29.

“Regrettably, we haven’t been able to have him compete yet. He suffered an injury early in the season and we are trying our best to manage it. We are pretty much being patient with him as we would any other who is hurt. He just turned 17 years old, so we don’t really want to rush anything with him. We hoped to have him at his best, but at the end of the day, whatever he is able to give whenever he is able to, we are willing to wait until that point. If it is Champs then so be it; if not then there are couple more Champs ahead. He would have given STETHS a lot of points already, so there is no pressure on him to come out and keep churning out more points. We are trying to look out for his well-being,” Walcott said.

He continued: ”Track and field is very unpredictable, you say one thing now and tomorrow morning things change. I’m very open-minded; whatever happens, so be it, but we are trying our best to be careful.

“What we don’t want is to have him entered and then he ends up on the floor or ground in tears. We are definitely not going to have that, so, as I said, I don’t want to call anything too early but also don’t want to rule out anything, so let’s see how it goes,” he added.

When asked if he is being conditioned for other championships later down in the year, Walcott told STAR Sports that’s in the plan, but the athlete’s well-being comes first.

“(Running after Champs) is a part of the agenda originally, but things change as you go along. It has always been the agenda like it was last year. He went to CARIFTA trials, ran the fastest time and wasn’t healthy to run the finals. At Champs, we went to the 4X100 finals with the second [best] or the best time and weren’t able to complete that final, so we just take it as it comes, he said.