Athletics at Wesley

In addition to cricket and soccer which were introduced to Wesley in 1897, reference has been made that athletics too was introduced during that year. However there were no references made regarding Athletics until 1940, when it was recorded in a school report that the performances of athletics was improving.In the early days of Wesley, the hostellers distinguished themselves in athletics since the hostel known as the Boarding House was the fourth along with the other three houses in the school system.

With the arrival of Rev. James Cartman in 1945, sports at Wesley began to show improvement. Until then from the prize reports that were available the overall performances of athletics at Wesley was reported to be average.

It was in 1946 that Wesley’s athletics performance was rewarded, when they were placed third in the Public Schools meet for the Tarbat Challenge Cup. The most outstanding athlete was M.M. Sheriff who went on to break College records. He was awarded Public School Colours for his performances. Quoting from an article written by Mr. Alfie David on how he grew up at Wesley in the 1950’s mentioned “Ihad to wear an ordinary blue blazer and not the College blazer. The “golden era” of athletics was in the late Forties and early fifties, prior to my entry to Wesley when there were athletes of the calibre of M. A. M. Sheriff , T. Van Rooyen. They were National Champions while in school. Sheriff proceeded to the USA along with my wife’s uncle Archie Singham and won a Harvard blue in athletics. He later joined the Sri Lanka Overseas Service and served for a few years as a Diplomat”.

The photograph below is a historic picture of the Ceylon’s first Independence day where brilliant athletes from that era were chosen to represent the four communities to bring four scrolls to Independence Square to be handed over to the Prime Minister Mr. D.S. Senanayake.

The athletes in the picture from left to right were Duncan White, Lakshman Kadirigamar (Sri Lanka’s finest Foreign Affairs Ministers ever), Oscar Wijesinghe and Wesley’s M.A.M. Sheriff. It was a few months later Duncan White went on to win the Silver Medal at the Olympics in London.

Then there was the burly Norman De La Harpe who also  who went on to represent Ceylon in the high jump at the Asian Games held in New Delhi in 1953.

 With the limited records available since the 1950’s unearthing information on athletics has been an upheaval task but with the help of a few old boys, I managed to trace a few names of outstanding athletes who shone for Wesley. Names that came to mind were Dr. Shanti McLelland, Richard Ebell, Rohan Amerasinghe, the Edema brothers Patrick and Anton, Jayantha Wickremeratne and the colourful M.C.A. Cader.

Although there were many students who had the full potential of turning out to be brilliant athletes of Wesley, for some reason Athletics at Wesley never got the needed prominence to bring out the best and hence students showed a lack of interest to take to athletics.

From time to time in the 70’s Wesley did produce a few outstanding athletes. Names that come to mind were O.K. Jyantha, Dale Van Heer,  Jeremy Brohier, Peter Peiris, GayanSeneratne, Beverly Wambeck, Riza Mohomed all of whom who went on to represent Wesley at Public schools level. Then there was Shammy Ranjendra, Shan Jurangpathy, Rambo Kukendran to name a few that come to mind that represented Wesley at Colombo North meets and all island relay carnivals.

From time to time in the 70’s Wesley did produce a few outstanding athletes. Names that come to mind were O.K. Jyantha, Dale Van Heer,  Jeremy Brohier, Peter Peiris, GayanSeneratne, Beverly Wambeck, Riza Mohomed all of whom who went on to represent Wesley at Public schools level. Then there was Shammy Ranjendra, Shan Jurangpathy, Rambo Kukendran to name a few that come to mind that represented Wesley at Colombo North meets and all island relay carnivals.

Outstanding athletes in the 80’saccording to the records in the Double Blue magazine of 1978 to 1985 were Ravi Hettiarachchi, H. Fernando and Navin De Silva. Other names mentioned were R.Senanayake, D. Bandupriya, and M.F. Kamaldeen.

Athletics at Wesley after the turn of the millennium in 2000 had seen gradual decline according to the athletics report given in the Double Blue Magazine of 2000 to 2004. There are no references of outstanding athletes representing Wesley at Public Schools or any other all island competitions. Over the years there seemed to be a vacuum of good athletes representing Wesley at Public school meets. Unfortunatelythe Double Blue Magazine of 2005 to 2008 is devoid of an athletics report, which suggests that there were no outstanding athletes produced by Wesley. 

However information on how athletics fared at Wesley since 1986 is referred for the readers attention which was thankfully given by the current Head of Sports at Wesley, Shiraz Jaldeen..