MAY PEN, Clarendon — Mangoes are to fruit as daCosta Cup titles are to the South Central Confederation.

Perhaps that’s an analogy that the football bigwigs in this part of the island could consider using as a slogan, for, despite not having the competition’s most successful team, South Central is certainly the spiritual home of the daCosta Cup, and the knockout subsidiary, the Ben Francis Cup.

So stuffed are the trophy cabinets in midisland, it would take a dry spell of about four years — coinciding with a boom period in western Jamaica — for South Central’s status as the winningest region in rural area schoolboy football to be usurped. In 59 daCosta Cup finals, the region has provided 32 winners, with their dominance also stretching to the Ben Francis Cup, a trophy that has been won by schools here on 17 occasions.

In total, seven schools and from three different parishes — Clarendon, St Elizabeth and St Catherine — have won the daCosta Cup title, with Manchester being the only parish in the region that is it yet to win a trophy, having lost on the three occasions Manchester High contested a final.

But this dominance is not limited to trophies; it can also be seen in the number of teams that consistently qualify for the latter stages of both competitions. This season, for instance, nine of the 16 schools that qualified for the quarter-final round hail from South Central, with the region also providing the four semi-finalists — St Elizabeth Technical High School (STETHS), Dinthill Technical, Glenmuir High and the eventual champions Clarendon College.

In fact, the only area in which the region falls short is the number of trophies won by a single team, with the Western Confederation’s Cornwall College (11) and Rusea’s High (10) leading that race. The South Central trio of Vere Technical (nine), Munro College (seven) and Clarendon College (seven) complete the top five.

“The Confed has been this dominant because the schools in the region have very good programmes,” said Michael Ricketts, the Confed chairman.

“These schools ensure that they consistently have a programme in place. They go out and get good coaches, they try to produce players. If not, they are prepared to go out and recruit them, because if you want to perform consistently at this level, winning trophies, you cannot just rely on what you have. At some point in time you will have to recruit players. You will have to go out and find good student athletes and reward them scholarships.”

Ricketts also pointed to the fact that South Central’s dominance is not concentrated on an individual school or parish. “First it was Munro in the early ’50s and ’60s,” he said, “and then Vere took over from them and dominated for a long, long time. Clarendon College, the only time they don’t do well is when they don’t have a serious programme in place; Glenmuir, as well. Garvey Maceo have won it once and STETHS have won four times.

“Lennon (and Spalding) are two other schools that were doing well in recent times. They went to the final, but are not doing so well now.”

“And I tell you something else,” added Ricketts, “South Central, because of our location, has the unique distinction of winning both the daCosta Cup and the Manning Cup because Bridgeport (High) would have also won the Manning Cup on a few occasions. And Dinthill, another St Catherine school, also won the daCosta Cup, I believe in 1979 and 1981, so it’s not just concentrated in one area. The only parish that has not won is Manchester. But, as you have seen, Manchester High are now emerging as a good unit.”