Calabar High School, David “Wagga” Hunt and The Walker Cup
The great Calabar High School has done it again. Last week Friday, the football team defeated Jamaica College (JC) to lift the Walker Cup trophy, symbol of the best knock-out schoolboy football team in the Corporate Area. They did it in 1974, when I was a member of Calabar High School.
Calabar, under the coaching of David Hunt, a Kingston College old boy, was fast becoming a football powerhouse to match its well known exploits in track and field. Under the guidance of David, Calabar won the Manning Cup and for the first time won the Olivier Shield. It was therefore, fitting tribute that manager Homer Morgan, new coach, Lijyasu Simms and the footballers dedicated the victory to their beloved and respected coach, David Hunt.
The match was not the best schoolboy football match I have watched. That honour belongs to the Calabar vs Clarendon College (CC) match in the 1970s. We drew with CC in Chapelton and we went to the National Stadium with high hopes. However, led by Lenny ‘Teacher’ Hyde, now coach of Harbour View, we got a fine lesson in playing total football. I have not since seen a schoolboy dominate a football match as Lenny Hyde. Neither have I seen a schoolboy team play better.
Emotional maturity
However, what this year’s Walker Cup Champions lacked in class, they made up with sheer grit, emotional maturity and finishing power. To ask teenagers to play football matches so soon after the death of their coach was asking a bit much. That they did it and won showed supernatural power. To be honest a 3-0 margin flattered Calabar.
Calabar lifting the Olivier Shield in 2005
As saw it, JC had more of the ball possession. However, JC lacked the finishing power. Calabar was strong in defence and the goalkeeper was assured most times. And captain Cleyon Brown was a marvel with a hat trick of goals. It was really a fitting tribute to David.
In the late ’70s, I used to visit the home of the Hunts frequently because my cousins, the Robinsons, were close friends of theirs. But strangely, I did not associate the white-haired and bearded David Hunt with his parents. But I admired David as the coach of Calabar. Read more
An afternoon with Olympic legend Herb McKenley
There may not be enough room here to list the accomplishments of track & field legend Herbert Henry McKenley. There is no more room on the walls, or space on the desk of his study to display the trophies, citations, and medals he has won in his 85 years.
As the Sunday Observer sat with the fabulous ‘Herb’ in the living room of his University Crescent home, he handed us the jacket cover of a documentary on his life produced by the CPTC.
Order of Jamaica; Commander of Distinction; Doctor of Laws (with honours); world-class athlete; world-class coach; the first man in recorded history to run the 400 metres in under 46 seconds in a flat race and under 45 seconds on a relay leg.
The only man to have won medals in all three sprints in the same major games; only man in the 20th Century to have Olympic medals in the 100m and 400m, it said.
That feature was produced in 2002, before Jamaica’s most notable athlete was conferred with the country’s third highest honour – the Order of Merit – for distinguished service in athletics locally and internationally and before Roosevelt Avenue was renamed Herb McKenley Drive in his honour. Read more
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General community site and blog for one of Jamaica's finest educational Institutions, Calabar High School.
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