How sweet it is for Edwin Allen, whose Cinderella team has now become the queens of high school girls’ track and field.

Their latest success came at the finals of the Digicel Grand Prix Athletics Championships where, for the third-straight year they have secured the title of girls’ champions. This was preceded by their expected win of the Central Championship, also a part of the Digicel Grand Prix series.Besides their hat-trick of Digicel Grand Prix wins, Edwin Allen have won the girls section at ‘Champs’ for four consecutive years and look set to continue building their dynasty.“It’s very exciting and very sweet for us,” said Michael Dyke, head coach of the Edwin Allen girls team.What makes these successes even sweeter for Dyke is the school being his alma mater. As a matter of fact, he also represented Edwin Allen at ‘Champs’, running the 800- and 1500-metre events.

“On leaving school we were the Cinderella school in any sport, and my intention was to go back there after college and lift the school,” admitted Dyke, who has been coaching at the school for over 20 years.“It took some time, but right now we’re at the top and we want to continue to reign for a long time,” added Dyke, now 50.“As expected, we came here [Grand Prix Finals] to defend our title and I think we did it quite convincingly without putting the athletes under any undue pressure.

“We’ve achieved most of our objectives. I think we fell behind by a few athletes to the Grand Prix Finals, based on my calculations. But it’s one of those things. I believe at the end of the day the athletes are the ones who will prevail, because we came out of this championship without any injuries or anything like that, which is key at this point in time.”Edwin Allen’s girls have been dominant on the Digicel Grand Prix Series since its inauguration three years ago, which has yielded the then first prize of $1 million in gym and sporting equipment on each occasion. “It was a little more challenging than previous years,” he said. “But I was still very optimistic that we could pull it off on the day,” ended Dyke.