HOWARD ARIS — Been there, done that!
HOWARD Aris shares a unique position with Jamaican track and field legend Herb McKenley.
They were both on their respective high school athletics teams (Kingston College and Calabar), were head coaches of winning Boys’ Championship teams, and served as Jamaica Amateur Athletic Association (JAAA) president in a year which the school they once coached won the Boys’ Champs title.
In fact, Aris was head coach at one point, during Kingston College’s 14-year winning streak from 1962 to 1975. That streak was broken by Calabar, under the directorship of McKenley, in 1976.
Aris, however, sits all by himself as having been an athlete on a winning Champs team. This gives him an outlook as an athlete, a coach, and a track and field administrator.
“I have a perspective of Champs and the impact it has had on our track and field programme and it is an indispensable part of our entire programme of athletics,” he told the Observer.
“Without the structure of Champs organised by ISSA, Jamaica probably would not be anywhere near to where we are now as world leader in track and field.”
While the Championships were not under the auspices of ISSA when it started in 1910, it has grown from just six schools in that first year to over 100 under ISSA’s tenure. The Interscholastic Schools Sports Association, the precursor to the current Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association, was not formed until 1946.
“Track and field owes a debt of gratitude to the ISSA-organised Championships because it is out of the high school programme that we see the talent over the years at the early, early stages and it is then that we can identify the potential,” Aris said.
He gave credit to the school sports governing body for managing to organise an efficient Championships throughout its momentous growth.
“It’s a significant achievement for ISSA to be able to adjust and adapt to this explosion of schools, while maintaining the organisational skills and the ability to manage the event in the way that they have done,” Aris said.
From his viewpoint, Aris was able to say how Champs has changed and how it has not.
“The similarity is that there is a fierce and intense rivalry amongst schools, and that has been sustained. That is consistent in terms of where it was then and now,” he said.
How is it different?
“Track and field is now a business; athletes use it as a profession and you have to look at it not only in terms of the outstanding efforts and achievements of the athletes, but what it has done to the industry of sports, and that is how it has changed compared to how it was when I was at school.”