Pres­i­dent of the Sec­ondary Schools’ Foot­ball League, William Wal­lace, does not re­mem­ber a time in his­to­ry when as many as sev­en di­vi­sions of the com­pe­ti­tion have had spon­sor­ship.

At Tues­day's launch of the 2019 sea­son at Fa­ti­ma Col­lege on Mu­cu­rapo Road in Port-of- Spain, Wal­lace beamed as he thanked the league’s cor­po­rate part­ners for com­mit­ting to this sea­son’s com­pe­ti­tions to the tune of al­most one mil­lion dol­lars in cash and prod­uct.

Among those part­ners are First Cit­i­zens and Shell which re­tain co-spon­sor­ship sta­tus of the Pre­mier di­vi­sion; Co­ca Co­la, ti­tle spon­sors of the boys’ and girls’ In­ter­col; Fru­ta, which will spon­sor the form one com­pe­ti­tion and the newest ad­di­tion, Mal­ta Carib, com­ing on board to spon­sor five di­vi­sions. They will fund the run­ning of the un­der 14 and 16 boys’ com­pe­ti­tions, the un­der 15 girls’, as well as the boys’ and girls’ se­nior di­vi­sion.

Dig­i­cel/Sports­max will for the third year in a row, pro­duce tele­vised broad­casts of match­es week­ly in North Amer­i­ca, the UK and re­gion­al­ly, at an op­er­a­tional cost well over $1.5 mil­lion. Mean­while, in­ter­na­tion­al sports­wear man­u­fac­tur­er Jo­ma, which is the of­fi­cial spon­sor of Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­al teams, has com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing a home and away play­ing uni­form for each of the 15 Pre­mier Di­vi­sion teams as well as train­ing and trav­el­ling kits for play­ers and staff worth over 500 thou­sand dol­lars.

In a time where the sport has suf­fered for fund­ing at many lev­els, Wal­lace says that is a tes­ta­ment to the at­trac­tive­ness of the schools’ game.

“We con­tin­ue to have a prod­uct that is at­trac­tive be­cause it’s sus­tain­able. It doesn’t have the lev­el of con­fu­sion that seems to ex­ist at the top and that is one of the rea­sons why spon­sors are at­tract­ed to us.”

Wal­lace al­so not­ed that this swell in spon­sor­ship co­in­cides with the in­creased ex­po­sure of our best young tal­ent while he ac­knowl­edged that the main aim of the League is its ex­pan­sion of the class­room, on­to the field of play.

“For us, that is the most im­por­tant thing. How many per­sons play (schools’) foot­ball? Over four thou­sand every year. Three-quar­ter of more than that would not go on to play pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball in any way but they go on to be­come cit­i­zens of T&T. For us, cre­at­ing the cit­i­zen who can con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly to Trinidad and To­ba­go is our ma­jor mis­sion.”

Mean­while, the com­pe­ti­tion be­gins in earnest on Sat­ur­day with the Dig­i­cel Cup, to be played be­tween last year’s un­de­feat­ed tre­ble win­ners, Na­pari­ma Col­lege and.

League run­ners-up Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege San Fer­nan­do. That match will take place from 4:30 pm at Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um in Mara­bel­la and will be pre­ced­ed by an over-40 clas­sic match be­tween past Na­pari­ma and Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege play­ers from 3:30 pm.