When the CARIFTA Games opens on Easter Saturday the Cayman team will be charged with not only representing the Islands but with doing so under the added pressure of performing in front of their home audience.

All the athletes will be calling on local support as they take on the their rivals from the other Caribbean family of nations.

Competing in her third year in the Under-17 Girls 100 metres and 200 metres sprints is Chantelle Morrison, the athlete most likely to succeed.

Over the past seven years she has established herself as the Islands second leading female sprinter behind Cydonie Mothersill and has done well, primarily overseas, that compares well with all athletes in her age group.

Morrison, 16, burst on the international scene in 2004 at the invitational International Primary Meet in Grand Cayman when competing in the sub-bantam category she romped home with the “double” for her age group.

She would move on a few months later to compete in her first international meet of any substance, the Caribbean Union of Teachers Championships for student-athletes 15 years or younger in Kingston, Jamaica.

Competing in the Under 11 Division Morrison trounced her regional rivals in both the 100m and 200m dashes and established herself as one to watch for on the regional athletic scene.

Competing at the Central American & Caribbean Age Group Championships in the Dominican Republic in 2005 the 11-year-old athlete stunned all who saw her as she annihilated the field in the 60m dash and anchored the Cayman Islands team to gold in the 4x100m relay.

In 2006 she won the U-13 Girls 100m at the Florida Regionals of the US Junior Olympics Trial and later that year competed in Virginia in the US Junior Olympics Championships where she won silver.

In that year as well she again trounced her opponents in the U-13 Girls 100m at the CUT Championships staged in St. Lucia. Injury prevented her from competing in the 200m finals at those championships.

It was at the 2007 CARIFTA Games in the Turks & Caicos Islands she first competed at that level. Morrison failed to make it to the finals but turned a lot of heads with a scintillating final leg run in the Under 17 Girls 4x100m.

At the age of 13 her times were good enough to qualify her for the World Youth Championships but unfortunately she was too young to compete.

In 2008 she returned to the CUT Championships in the British Virgin Islands, where she showed tremendous form and dazzling speed in winning the U-15 Girls 100m.

Once again injury prevented her from competing in the 200m. At the 2008 CARIFTAS in St. Kitts she made it to the Finals of the U-17 Girls 100m, making her the first female athlete since Mothersill to achieve this feat.

She competed at the 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games in Pune, India and again made it to the finals of the 100m.

At the CARIFTAS last year at Vieux Fort, St. Lucia Morrison was edged out of the silver medal position by the narrowest of margins as she claimed Cayman’s only medal at those Games.

She again achieved a time that was better than the qualifying standard set by the IAAF for the World Youth Championships but would again miss out at competing at those championships due to the change in the age group requirement. She would however again dominate her favourite 100m event at the Island Games but missed out on what appeared to be a certain gold medal due to injury.

At this year’s CARIFTA Games which run from 3-5 April at the Truman Bodden Sports Complex, Morrison will be amongst the favourites for the gold medal and if she achieves this will become the first Caymanian to win the Girls 100m at the U-17 level.