When Jaydon Hibbert bounded out to a triple jump personal best of 16.05 metres at this year’s World Under 20 Championships, the mark made him the first Jamaican ever to win a medal in the event. It was also compensation for years of disappointment.

“I’m happy for him because this actually was the first year he actually made Kingston College’s track and field team to go to Boys and Girls Champs”, recorded Hibbert’s coach Jeremy DeLisser in October. “Just every year, up until this year, he ended up just a bit short”, said the coach.

Hibbert took his chance at the Boys and Girls Championships, with a class 2 triple jump silver and kept plugging away. “From that point of view”, Delisser added, “I am extremely happy and proud of him that he was able to progress from strength to strength this year.”

Asked what made the difference for Hibbert this season, the coach expounded, “he has grown a little bit which has helped him with the overall development, strength-wise and otherwise. I think over the years, the fact that he didn’t make the team, it made him very humble, very focused, and very driven so he was always one that was a little smaller than the rest so a couple of years ago, we decided to tweak his programme a little bit because he had the knack to be very technically good but the speed, he was a little bit small, weak so we decided to tweak his programme a little bit over the last two years and the combination of him growing along with that tweaking of the programme and the fact that his disappointments made him stronger, that combination is what pretty much gave him the results he has gotten this year.”

In 2018, another DeLisser-coached KC boy, Wayne Pinnock won Jamaica’s first-ever World Under 20 long jump medal when he placed third. Hibbert’s unique achievement and a bronze in the 2021 long jump by Kavian Kerr have given DeLisser hope for progress by Jamaica in the horizontal jumps in the near future.

“I’ve always thought that we’ve had the potential in the field events, specifically in the jumps. Definitely, the speed is there on both sides, the male and the female”, he said. His hopes lie with the quality of coaching now available in the jumping events.

“Seeing a lot of coaches out there who are doing better and better in the jumps, I’m hoping that’s the impetus to see us start dominating the jumps as we have done on the track”, he envisaged. “And I can see, hopefully, in the near future, not only numbers in three jumpers or four jumpers at the respective major championships but coming home with at least 2 medals in a few of those events as well at all international levels”, concluded the KC and Edwin Allen High School jumps guru.