Principals should not encourage coaches to break the law and allow their football team to start training and starting camping in an effort to get a jump on the competition, in the event that the ISSA schoolboys football season gets the go-ahead to start later this year.
Keith Wellington, president of ISSA, the organisation that run high school sports competitions urged school heads to rein in the impatient coaches who could inadvertently set back the progress for the other schools.
ISSA is awaiting the word from the government if their proposals for the restart of the competitions on October and in a virtual meeting earlier this week, Wellington said, “Principals should refrain from allowing the start of training and camps in particular until the protocols have been approved by the government.
Additionally, schools can use the month of July to put in place the recommend measures including completing and collecting and reviewing of the requisite forms, before restarting group training after the completion of CXC in August, all based on approval from the relevant authorities.”
Wellington said further, “Don’t allow students to be gathering on your campuses for training now as we have not gotten any permission to do so and we need to protect ourselves, we need to ensure that we don’t create liabilities unnecessarily and therefore they should wait until the protocols have been shared and the government has given the approval to go ahead with the training.”
He said emphasis was placed on the fact that all planning for the resumption of the competition must focus on the health and safety of students, coaches, all participants as well as the general community.
“The concern for the health of persons is greater for coaches who are involved more than students, as coaches are at higher risk of contracting the disease and also a higher risk of suffering illness from the disease so you must be particularly concerned with your own health.
