Dr. Thelora Reynolds, director of student services and development at UWI (left), addresses the UWI Games Press Conference at the Mona Campus yesterday. Olympian Grace Jackson, student services manager for sport and director of the UWI Games (right), looks on. -Junior Dowie/Staff Photographer

Anthony Foster, Freelance Writer

The University of West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus, will host the 2007 UWI Games from May 17-24.

During the week-long Games, participants from UWI campuses at Mona, St. Augustine in Trinidad & Tobago and Cave Hill in Barbados will take part in 10 sporting disciplines.

They include cricket, hockey, table tennis, lawn tennis, football, netball, basketball, swimming, volleyball and track and field.

The track and field competition, which was recently named in honour of former UWI sports director, Keith Gardener, will be held at the National Stadium on May 23.

There will be a two-hour break at the track meet and during the time a Jamaica Select Under-23 team will tackle a UWI All-Star team in the Garth Taylor Memorial match.

The late Taylor was a young Jamaican footballer who collapsed and died during what was then known as the Inter-Campus football match in the early 1970s.

The track and field events to be contested are 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 1500m, 3000m, 5000m, 4x100m, 4x400m, medley, long jump, high jump, shot put, javelin and discus.

Meanwhile, six track and field stars have also been invited to participate at the event in the invitational races.

They are world 100m record holder Asafa Powell, the world's fastest woman in 2006 Sherone Simpson, Trinidad & Tobago's World Championships silver medallist Darrell Brown, Olympic relay gold medallist Aleen Bailey, World 200m record holder Usain Bolt and Jermaine Gonzales.

National 100m junior record holder Yohan Blake of St. Jago has also been invited to participate.

According to Olympian Grace Jackson, the meet director, they included the invitational races to add something special to the event.

She also said other institutions such as G.C. Foster College and University of Technology (UTech) have been invited for the invitational events - 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 110m and 100m hurdles.

In cricket, Mona and Cave Hill are set to bowl off action at the Mona Bowl pitch on May 18 at 10:00 a.m.

St. Augustine and Cave Hill will close the show on the football field on the afternoon of the 24th, also at Mona Bowl.

The teams are set to arrive in the island between May 16-17 for the opening ceremony at 8:00 p.m. on the 17th and depart on the 25th.