Jamaica Week 3

I am currently sitting in my room trying to figure out if the delicious meal I’m eating is curried chicken or goat, but that’s beside the point. In my last entry, I mentioned that I would be working with a former Olympian. It’s time I expounded upon that.

Most people know that I love sports. I love playing sports. I love watching sports. I love talking about sports. Certain sports have a special place in my heart—softball/baseball, sand volleyball, football, climbing, rowing—but as much as I love all of these sports, they all take a second seat to my first love: track and field.

Back in my Uncle Rico high school glory days, I was quite the T&F enthusiast, and even earlier than that, I did a 3rd grade school project on “My Hero, Florence Griffith-Joyner.” Yes, I had the fake nails and all. I also have a softball cap signed by Carl Lewis because he happened to be at one of my little league softball games. I get a big dumb grin on my face every time I go to the UWI Mona grass track because just knowing that I’m running circles on the same training path used by Usain Bolt is exhilarating. I love being in Jamaica simply by virtue of the fact that local people follow international track and field like we follow March Madness. Well, that and about a billion other reasons. But I think I’ve made my point.

Which brings me back to my original point: my week spent with Ms. Grace Jackson, international track icon, is probably one of the most amazing/humbling privileges I’ve ever had in my life. Before you young guns rush to Wikipedia to determine her identity (as my older/wiser readers shake their heads), let me save you the trip:

Grace Jackson (born 14 June 1961 in St. Ann, Jamaica) is a retired Jamaican athlete who competed mainly in the 100 metres and 200 metres. She reached the 100m and 200m finals in the 1984 and 1988 Summer Olympic Games and the 200m final in Barcelona in 1992. Her breakthrough performance was at the 1988 Summer Olympics held in Seoul, South Korea. She won a Silver medal over 200m behind Florence Griffith Joyner, beating then 200m World Champion Silke Moller, Heike Drechsler and team mate Merlene Ottey. She also won a bronze medal at the 1987 IAAF World Indoor Championships and a silver medal at the 1989 IAAF World Indoor Championships.

The only woman to beat her in the 200m at the Seoul Games was my 3rd grade hero! That, my friends, is really REALLY cool. You’d never know Grace was such a track stud the way she carries herself. She’s completely down to earth—very unassuming, genuine, hilarious. She doesn’t use her prestige as a launching platform, rather she relies on her former experience with competitive NCAA athletics to help build UWI Mona’s sports program.

Regardless of her track record (ha! I couldn’t resist...pun totally intended), the opportunity to assist the Sports Director at UWI Mona was such a blast. Unlike FSU, or UGA, or most of the other universities with competitive D1 sports programs that have been established for decades, UWI Mona is in the very early stages of building a University-wide program that competes nationally and internationally. Grace currently oversees the recreational and competitive sport programs at the University, and she operates with a staff of 4…compared to the multi-department system that D1 schools have at their disposal. I was able to review and edit documents regarding athletic scholarship criteria, management/governance, sponsorship/grant applications, and the 5-year strategic plan. Grace is truly building this program from the ground up, and as an American student surrounded by enormous American athletic offices, to be involved in the early planning and implementation stages of a nationally and internationally competitive program is one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that make you stop and say (for lack of better words), “Wow…this is SO COOL!”

Today we grabbed lunch at a Chinese restaurant (and for the record, having Chinese with Grace Jackson is way better than the prospect of a tea party with John Smoltz and Chipper Jones combined) and went to a seminar on sports marketing and management being hosted by the International Best Practices Network. I learned some great sponsorship/grant-writing techniques that I will definitely using this year.

Again, athletic history aside, it has really been such a fun week working with the Sports Department, and I am extremely grateful that Grace has given me such a meaningful experience and treated me as a trusted friend. She’s taking me with her family to the country tomorrow (possibly Negril) for an excursion away from campus.

I’ll probably get one or two more final updates in next week, but I thought it would be worth mentioning that I’m down to my final 7 days here. Even though there have been days that have felt long, the overall experience has blown by. I will miss the staff here dearly! I am praying that I’ll have a job by Spring Break so that I can come back with FSU’s Beyond Borders exchange program en lieu of job searching…