Photo by Bill Roseberry
LaJarvia Brown
LaJarvia Brown is celebrating her second national track championship this week.
The two-time Class 3A IHSA girls’ triple jump champion won that event during the AAU Junior Olympics on Wednesday in Norfolk, Va. She leaped 39 feet, 11.5 inches to finish first in a group of 64 competing in the 17-18 age division.
On Monday, the Alton High senior soared a personal-best 19-6 to win the long jump. She will compete Friday in the 4x100-meter relay. The AAU nationals at Dick Price Stadium conclude Saturday.
“I don’t think LaJarvia was necessarily happy with her jump today,” AHS coach Terry Mitchell said Wednesday. “But she beat all comers and that’s what counts.”
Jada Baylark of Little Rock, Ark., finished second in the triple jump with a leap of 39-0.5. Keila Robertson of Gaithersburg, Md., took third at 38-1.25. And Lailah Elliott of Alton was eighth with a jump of 37-4.5
Brown soared 41-9 in the triple jump at last month’s International Association of Athletic Federations World Youth Championships in Cali, Colombia, and finished 14th overall, including second among U.S. competitors. In May, it was Brown going 41-2 in the triple jump at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston to win her second consecutive state title.
Brown had leaped 41-6.25 in a regular-season spring meet at the Edwardsville Tiger Relays to set the all-time state mark. Deana Simmons of Decatur MacArthur held the previous Illinois best triple jump distance of 41-5 in 1996.
“What a spring and summer she has had. It has been tremendous,” Mitchell said. “Now, she has won two nationals championships in three days and we will see what she can do on the 4x100-meter relay team Friday.
“I really have nothing else I can say about what she has done this year. I’m speechless.”
In 2014, Brown won her first IHSA triple jump title by going 40-3.5.
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