Happy Grove’s coach seeks scholarship for top athlete

Happy Grove High's Courtney Williams' high school journey is at an end, and head coach Damion Reid hopes his future will include getting the chance at an overseas college for him to take the next step in his journey.

Williams won the Carfita Games octathlon title with 5253 points, a week after finishing fourth in the decathlon at the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls' Athletic Championships (Champs).

In a season that ended on a high after the low of just missing out on the medals, Reid is hoping that the desire and potential he observed in Williams at Happy Grove will be the same traits that overseas college coaches see and take a chance to add them to their programme.

"I am craving some sort of scholarship. I wouldn't mind getting a call or two saying that we are interested in Courtney, seeing that his body would not have been in Champs-winning mode for any Champs-winning school. He would have peaked to perform at Champs.

"Any overseas or local coaches, and we have a lot of good coaches, could look at Courtney as a prospect to say, 'hey, I am going to take a chance on him'," Reid told STAR Sports.

Reid's decathlon programme at Happy Grove has only been in place for two years, but he has revelled in the improvements Williams made, despite having to balance between track and field and football.

"He wasn't extremely good at any of these events, but he made the adjustments. So when I started the programme last season, he came eighth at Champs, and I said, 'we are going to do this again'.

"I didn't get him back until December (after football), and for him to run 11.25 seconds (in the 100 metres), if I had him in August, he would have run faster. It says a lot about his progress," Reid said.

Williams will be sitting his Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations next month, and Reid hopes that whether it is at home or abroad, he gets the opportunity to progress to the senior level. Reid believes that Williams has the drive to make it.

"The so-called country athletes make the matriculation to seniority far quicker than the athletes whose bodies would have been put under Champs-winning mode repeatedly," Reid opined.