Un­cer­tain­ty hangs over whether the 2023 Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools Foot­ball League fi­nals will be held for 2023.

The 2022 edi­tion was not con­test­ed af­ter the Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Foot­ball Com­mit­tee and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion were un­able to se­cure the sup­port of peren­ni­al spon­sors At­lantic.

Last year’s fi­nals were the first since 2019 when the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic brought all sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties in schools across the coun­try to a halt back in 2020 and 2021.

Fol­low­ing the crown­ing of dis­trict cham­pi­ons 12 months ago, the lack of spon­sors forced the can­cel­la­tion of the na­tion­al fi­nals.

With less than a month re­main­ing in the 2023 sea­son, no date has yet been an­nounced for this year’s ti­tle-de­cid­ing match­es.

Chair­man of the Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools Foot­ball League Ter­rence Cae­sar, re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia Sports said fund­ing re­mained the ob­sta­cle to de­cid­ing on a date for the ti­tle match­es.

He said via What­sApp, “The main chal­lenge is the present lack of spon­sor­ship. We have been in dis­cus­sions with var­i­ous in­ter­est­ed par­ties and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has been hav­ing dis­cus­sions with (long-time spon­sors) At­lantic. We are hope­ful that we will be able to an­nounce some­thing pos­i­tive with­in the next few weeks. The chil­dren are al­lowed to be out­side and show­case their tal­ents. The dis­ap­point­ment comes from the knowl­edge that there is noth­ing in place at present for Dis­trict win­ners to go for­ward (to the fi­nals).”

Cae­sar added that de­spite the un­cer­tain­ty over the fi­nan­cial sup­port he was pleased that the young­sters were com­pet­ing and hav­ing fun.

He said, “The stand­out each year for me is the high qual­i­ty of play from our na­tion’s youths.

“The pas­sion they play with for their schools and then the hu­mil­i­ty they dis­play af­ter vic­to­ry.”

He praised the coach­es for prepar­ing the play­ers and said, “It is a tes­ta­ment to the fan­tas­tic work that our teach­ers and coach­es have been do­ing in con­junc­tion with the par­ents.”

De­spite the chal­lenges the or­gan­i­sa­tion faced, Cae­sar said, the play­ers showed great en­thu­si­asm.

“Some schools are very will­ing but they strug­gle to ac­quire a coach, and un­like the sec­ondary schools, pri­ma­ry schools have to raise funds or charge stu­dents to be able to pay a coach a stipend,” he not­ed.

Cae­sar said the lo­gis­tics of trav­el­ling to match­es was al­so an is­sue.”

In some dis­tricts, some stu­dents are miss­ing class­es. For ex­am­ple, in large dis­tricts like St George East, it just is not fi­nan­cial­ly fea­si­ble for some schools to par­tic­i­pate due to their size and lo­ca­tion. Go­ing to a game at 10 am may mean leav­ing school at 8 am and then reach­ing back to school about 1 pm,” wrote Cae­sar.

He gave ku­dos to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion for pro­vid­ing train­ing gear.

He called for more school ad­min­is­tra­tors to be sup­port­ive of hav­ing their stu­dents in­volved in sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we have some prin­ci­pals who see par­tic­i­pa­tion in sports as a dis­trac­tion from aca­d­e­mics, even though the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion sent out a mem­o­ran­dum ear­li­er this year re­mind­ing Prin­ci­pals of the im­por­tance of sports and oth­er co-cur­ric­u­lar and ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties to the holis­tic de­vel­op­ment of the child,” he lament­ed.

—Clay­ton Clarke