Over 35 schools and hundreds of students will benefit from telecommunications giants Cable and Wireless' 13th renewal of the Inter-Secondary Schools tennis competition, which will see the sponsors pour $1.5 million into this year's event.

"It's all not about the money and those closely associated with the competition will know that we do not get a lot in terms of financial returns," said Cable and Wireless vice-president of Corporate Affairs, Errol Miller.

"However, like so many things, our point of view is that we live here, make money here and we need to give something back to the society," Miller went on.

"There is no better way to do so than investing in our youth and we are happy to be finding ways to keeping them engaged in meaningful activity," he added.

Divided into three zones

The competition, which will begin on Monday, will see the teams divided into three zones - Eastern, Western and Central division. The first round of games will be played in the regions on a round-robin basis with the top teams advancing to the national final, in April, which will take a knockout format.

Several national representatives have emerged from the Cable and Wireless competition, including Eldad Campbell and Christopher Martin of Wolmer's, a team that has won the competition for the last three years. Brandon Burke of Campion, Dax Vernon of Hillel, Davis Cup team member Demar Johnson (Ferncourt) and Tinesta Rowe (Ocho Rios), who is now on scholarship at Fresno State University in America.

In 2006, Cable and Wireless became the first organisation to offer a tennis scholarship at the tertiary level, a trend they will continue this year with a $300,000 scholarship tenable at the University of Technology.