G.C. Foster hunting three titles at Penn Relays

G.C. FOSTER College, the country's most successful collegiate team at the Penn Relays, will be seeking more glory at the 118th staging in Philadelphia, April 25-27.

At last year's staging, the quartet of Jhevaughn Whyte, Kadrian Goldson, Zadrian Barnes and Michael Sharpe pulled off a big win in the 4x200 metres after clocking 1:23.20 to turn back heavyweight college teams Clemson, Houston and Texas A&M University.

They were second in the 4x100m in 40.31 seconds, losing to Houston who won in 39.81, while they were fifth in the 4x400m in 3:13.83 where Texas A&M won in 3:09.41.

Jermaine Hamilton, a member of the coaching staff, is confident that G.C Foster College can repeat their 4x200m success and could add more.

"We are very confident that we can retain our title as the team is much stronger than last year, despite not having the service of Goldson who is now out of the collegiate system," said Hamilton.

According to Hamilton they have good replacements.

"We have Odaine McPherson who has been impressive in the sprints so far this season and there is also Derrick Luke out of Dominica who has been excellent for us in relay duties all season," said the former Bridgeport High school representative who was the lead-off runner in 2016 when Jamaica scored an upset win over a very strong USA team in a USA versus the World clash.

G.C Foster College picked up back-to-back wins at the Penn Relays in 2016 and 2017 in the 4x100m and Hamilton thinks his team can get a third win this year.

"The team is running much faster than the time they did for their second-place finish at Penns last year. They clocked 39.90 to win at the intercollegiate championships and we expect to go much faster," Hamilton said.

With the likes of former Ferncourt High 400m runner Derrick Grant and Tyrese Ebanks, a former Green Island High athlete, in their line-up, their 4x400m team sent out a strong message at the Gibson McCook Relays after clocking 3:07.10, a time much faster than the winning time at the Penn Relays last year.

"We are definitely going for all three relay titles as we are yet to run our best teams in any of the event so far this season. Once we assemble our best quartet for each of the events, we are extremely confident that great things will happen," a very confident Hamilton said.