Making the team would be a huge deal – Stona

AS A schoolboy discus thrower at St Jago High School, Roje Stona was inspired by personable champion Fedrick Dacres and the other discus pioneers Traves Smikle and Chad Wright. Now Stona, Dacres and Smikle stand 6th, 7th and 9th on the 2023 world performance list with the World Championships beckoning from Budapest, Hungary, next month.

First of all, Stona will meet the pioneers and a cast of young prospects like himself at the National Championships, which begin tomorrow inside the National Stadium.

Stona, whose last meet saw him place second at the NCAA Championships last month, Dacres and Smikle are the only Jamaicans with throws beyond the World Championships qualifying standard of 67 metres.

However, that distance isn’t beyond Wright, the 2021 Olympic finalist, 2018 World Under-20 champion Kai Chang, Stona’s Arkansas teammate, and 2021 World Under-20 discus runner-up Ralford Mullings or this year’s US junior college winner, Brandon Lloyd.

Through his time at Clemson University and this year at the University of Arkansas, Stona always aspired to the heights achieved by the pioneers.

“Facing those guys, even though looking up to them from high school, I knew that day would come that I’d face up to big competitions, try to put myself in the books next to those guys,” he said.

The Nationals will be just his sixth discus competition of the year.

He leads all Jamaicans at 68.64, with 2019 World Championships runner-up Dacres at 68.57 and 2017 World finalist Smikle at 68.14 metres and Stona has another 2023 throw taped at 67.02 metres.

Asked about making the team to Budapest, the giant Jamaican replied, “I think it would be a huge deal. I mean, I’ve been in the situation before, last season at the Trials, placed second and I competed against most of the guys. I don’t think Fedrick was there, but most had competed there, made the Commonwealth team and it was a good experience.”

He finished sixth at those Games last year with Smikle third.

Having competed against the top Jamaicans at home, 2022 World runner-up Mykolas Alekna in college and Samoa’s current world number one, Alex Rose, at the Commonwealth Games, he is at peace with meeting the world’s elite in Budapest.

“I’ve been expecting, at some point, to compete against those guys. I did do a couple competitions against guys on the world circuit, so I’ve experienced no anxiety, no nervousness about that. I just treat it as a normal competition.”

However, he knows that throwing in the Worlds would be a major step.

“If I do make the World Championship later on this summer, I think it will be a huge deal again, facing those guys and even trying to put myself in contention as well.”

His big throw came on May 13 and his NCAA mark was 65.54 metres.