Col Errol Johnson (right), president of the Eastern Secondary School's Sports Association (ESSSA), looks at a symbolic sponsorship cheque presented by Wesley Scott (left), customer service and mortgage development adviser at the Jamaica National Building Society (JNBS), during a press briefing to launch the 2011 ESSSA/ JNBS Track and Field Championships. Sharing the spotlight is Rosemarie Walker, principal Happy Grove High School in Portland. - Contributed

Jamaica National Building Society yesterday announced their 25th year of sponsorship of the Eastern Secondary Schools' Sports Association (ESSSA) Track and Field Championships, Eastern Champs, during a media briefing at the Altamont Court Hotel in New Kingston yesterday morning.

March 7 and 8 are the dates and the University of the West Indies Mona Bowl is the venue for this year's staging of the meet, which features schools from the parishes of St Thomas, Portland, St Mary and parts of St Andrew.

Of note, this year will see the participation of all 22 ESSSA member schools, an occurrence that has not happened since the 2006 staging of the championships.

new athletics track

In previous years, the National Stadium would host the final day of competition, but that seems unlikely this year, even though the work on the new athletics track which was recently laid at the facility is already competition ready.

At yesterday's launch, the Stadium East was announced as the venue for this year's staging, but a late switch was forced after organisers took a look at the track there and were left unimpressed during a site visit yesterday afternoon.

ESSSA president, Colonel Errol Johnson, admitted that not having access to the National Stadium is not ideal and may pose some challenges to the organisers. He pointed out that meet director Garth Gayle has been in dialogue with Independence Park Limited, the managers of the facilities, to explore the possibility of the National Stadium track becoming available.

However, no updates on the matter were available.

Johnson was, however, confident that this would not have a direct impact on the organisation of the meet itself.

spectators

"It (not having access to the National Stadium) has a big impact because we know that it's difficult to have spectators at Stadium East for an entire day because it has no covering. So that would be an impact because I don't think many schools will be sending in their spectators and not many students would want to come in to spend the entire day in the sun anyway," said Johnson. I'm also not sure about the surface at the track at Stadium East so, yes, we do have some

"I don't think it will detract too much from the organisation of the meet, so we are well prepared and everything is in place," Johnson added.

Some 1,040 athletes are expected to participate at the meet and Wesley Scott, customer service and mortgage development adviser at Jamaica National, expressed pride of his company's involvement with the meet.