Edwin Allen gloomy after Gayle’s passing

A PALL of gloom hung overEdwin Allen High School in Clarendon yesterday as students, teachers and support staff assembled for devotion following last Friday’s sudden passing of student athlete Tanisha Gayle.

Fifteen-year-old Gayle died at the Percy Junor Hospital.

Tears flowed freely yesterday as her peers hugged each other, grieving their schoolmate who had lived on the institution’s dorm for over three years.

Councillors drawn from several schools were at the institution to help members of the school’s track team, classmates, teachers and staff process their grief.

Principal Jermaine Harris, in his address, described the 10th-grader as a “lively, bubbly student, who was well liked.”

Also present at the devotion was head coach of the school’s successful track and field team, Michael Dyke.

While Dyke did not address the devotion, Harris described the difficult time he was experiencing:

“We will be providing as much support to the track team and the coaching staff to help them with this loss. Coach Dyke is devastated. In his over 30 years of coaching he has never experienced this tragedy, so we will be there for them.”

Harris also said the school will be providing support to Gayle’s family:

“As a school, we will be giving as much support as possible to ‘Tan Tan’’s family, her father Donovan Gayle and his family. It is an extremely difficult time for them.”

Chairman of the school board, Reverend Winston Pecco, as well as church groups were also on hand to lend support.

Pecco urged Gayle’s schoolmates to channel their grief into doing well in her memory:

“In your training remember her, and when we are at Champs, remember her.”

Following the devotion, Harris told The Gleaner that the family has asked for privacy as they try to come to terms with their devastating loss.

At the end of the general devotion, the school body was divided into smaller groups as the Ministry of Education’s councillors met with them.

Dyke told The Gleaner on Saturday that Gayle sat down to rest with teammates during training, but stopped responding to requests to resume. She was rushed to the school doctor in Frankfield before being transferred to the Percy Junor Hospital, where she died while being treated.

Gayle was a member of Edwin Allen’s gold medal-winning medley relay team at last March’s ISSA/Grace Kennedy Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championships.