Before she started jumping, Jasmine Moore wasn’t very big on track, revealing, “After that first practice, I did not ever want to go again. I used to cry and run and hide.” As a fifth-grader she would have rather been working on competitive cheer and tumbling, to be honest. But then she tried the long jump in seventh grade. She placed 6th in the USATF Junior Olympics. The next summer her team needed points, so she added the triple jump. She won both at the AAU JOs that summer, going 18-5¼ (5.62) and 40-6¾w (12.36).
Perhaps it was meant to be. Her father, Earl Moore, had been a hurdler for Western Michigan. Her mother, the former Trinette Johnson, was a 3-time All-America in the long jump for Florida State, with a best of 21-4¾ (6.52). “Growing up my parents kept my sister and me active,” explains Moore. “Of course, they wanted me to try track, but if I didn’t want to do it and I wanted to play another sport, it wasn’t a big deal.”
Yet Moore soon became a big deal and enters her senior season as a 3-time All-America in the TJ (No. 3 as a soph, No. 2 as a junior, No. 1 as a senior) and last year’s No. 2 in the long jump. As a ninth-grader at Lake Ridge High (Mansfield, Texas), she not only captured a pair of State titles, but also won New Balance Nationals with her 43-5¾w (13.25), adding a 3rd in the long jump. She had fallen in love with the horizontals: “I think it’s fun. I think it’s different. It’s just fun getting to fly through the air.”
As a soph she won State with a PR 43-4¾ (13.22), having earlier stretched her long jump best to 20-4 (6.19). Runner-up at the USATF Juniors, she won a bronze in the triple at the Pan-Am Juniors.
Last year Moore really caught fire, opening up with a Texas Relays win (a 44-1/13.43 that moved her to No. 6 on the all-time prep list), hitting a long jump best of 21-¼ (6.40), and then winning State titles in both (the triple at a windy 45-4¾/13.83) as well leading off a 4×2 win and a 2nd in the 4×1.
She won the USATF Junior triple jump at 43-4¼ (13.21) and took 2nd in the long jump with her 20-11¾ (6.39). At the World Juniors, she placed 10th in both. She says of the Tampere experience, “The Worlds is at a different level and just seeing all the other girls, their technique, their arm-placement, well, it was just eye-opening.”
Now she’s ready to move up. Having settled on her college—Georgia—she and coach Kenny Roseman have been retooling her technique a bit. “I had been doing double arms, now I’m doing single,” she says. The change was motivated by Georgia head Petros Kyprianou, who mentioned during a visit that it was something he would change in college. “I just wanted to start early,” she explains, “so that freshman year wouldn’t be as big of a transition.”
For this season, Moore is hoping that new technique will help her to her goals: “Getting into the 44s consistently, getting to the high school national record [44-11¾]. In the long jump, hitting 6.70 (21-11¾). Mainly just being consistent overall.”
She might even cap the season with a visit to the USATF meet. “Depending on how I’m jumping, it would be just great to jump with Keturah [Orji] and Tori [Franklin]. Just to see.”
