DON’T BE MISTAKEN. It’s not that Miles Nesmith didn’t appreciate winning silver in the men’s triple jump at the World U20 Champs a few weeks ago in Eugene. And it’s not that he wasn’t happy to smash Kenny Hall’s 22-year-old prep record and become the first beyond the 55-foot barrier with 55-1 (16.79), a previously unimaginable achievement for a high schooler.
It’s that the Memphis Central grad came to win, not get 2nd. “It was bittersweet in the moment. Obviously, I wanted to win. Then as you wind down, get back to the dorm, you think, “OK, I’m the only high schooler to ever jump 55-feet. I have a national record. I PRed three times in one competition. So, it may have been a disappointment because I lost, but I didn’t come out there and underperform in any way, you know?”
But the silver medal finish was also tough because of who beat him: No less than his soon-to-be Kansas State teammate, Michael-Andre Edwards of Jamaica, who countered Nesmith’s fourth- and fifth-round PRs with an epic one of his own in the final stanza: 56-½ (17.08). It’s not animosity or that Edwards wasn’t a worthy foil. It’s that he had also handed the Nesmith his only other loss to a prep in ’26, back at the Penn Relays.
Nesmith “rarely loses to another jumper more than once,” says Morcellous Harris, his summer/winter coach at Youth Track & Field of Memphis. “Edwards is the first guy I can remember to ever to beat him twice. If you beat him, he really comes back extra focused.”
After a stellar first jump of 53-6½ (16.32) for an early lead, Nesmith found himself in 2nd when his fourth jump came up. “I had added motivation,” he says. “So, I jumped 16.54 (a PR 54-3¼) and took the lead back for a short second. Then Michael went 16.71 on his fifth jump.
“I’d never jumped that far before, but I was like, ‘OK, I gotta keep going, I gotta go further.’ It kind of just mentally made me go out there and really try to do something I never did before. So, I went out there and jumped 16.79.
“Then Michael went 17.08. So, I went out there for my final jump with the mindset of ‘I’m gonna go out there to try to jump 17m.’ I set that goal for myself at the beginning of the season.” Unfortunately, Nesmith’s form finally broke down.
Still, Harris, who was watching at home with his nephew and fellow Memphis coach Shawn Harris, was mesmerized. “It’s something I believed he could do, but then to actually see him do it was amazing. And it’s crazy because I actually saw Hall set the old record in person.”
What? Yes, Harris was really there at the old Hayward Field 22 years ago, watching younger siblings compete during the USATF Junior Olympics in ’04, and saw the Baton Rouge prep hit the 54-10¼ (16.72) and 56-2½w (17.13) jumps that stunned the T&F world.
Now Harris’s own athlete had beaten Hall’s “Beamonesque” mark a generation later.
“I could tell from his first jump that he was gonna jump pretty far, and it was just gonna be a matter of, you know, would he be on board to do it,” he says. “I was talking with Coach Shawn… it reminded us of watching Christian Taylor and Will Claye battle when they were teammates at Florida. It was the most exciting triple jump competition I’ve seen in a long while.”
As good a triple jumper as Nesmith is, it’s only part of his résumé. He’s a good enough long jumper to have won the Nike Outdoor title in ’25. He’s also high jumped 6-10 or better half a dozen times, including 7-2½ in ’25. He even once scored 6262 points in a Tennessee section meet decathlon (admittedly, it featured triple jump instead of javelin).
Nesmith has no aspirations to be a triple jumping version of LJ/deca titan Simon Ehammer of Switzerlan, but it’s certainly possible he might long jump or dabble a little in the HJ at K-State. Harris admits, “I thought the high jump could have been his best event. It kind of comes easy for him. The triple jump was difficult for him to get the rhythm and everything, but I think that’s what made him gravitate towards it.”
Says Nesmith, “The triple jump has got to be my favorite just because there’s so many different aspects to it, you have so many different things that you can do that can change the jump. It’s just one of a kind.
“They [Central coach Rashad Haynes and staff] saw the potential in it for me, so they really started to develop me in it. They had the previous state record holder (Zavien Wolfe ’23) before me, so they knew what they were doing.”
Harris says it’s Nesmith’s mental fortitude that makes him special. “He has really showed me something with his composure. He’s able to process adversity and move to the next step.”
Says Nesmith, “Track is so mental, and the thing about jumps, you get multiple times to go through it. In the 100, you get a bad start, you can’t do it over again. But if the first jump doesn’t go as planned, you can’t just mentally lose it and be like, ‘Oh man, I blew it.’ You have to move on, take what you can from it to improve the next one. I go with that mindset into every competition, to just have a short memory, but also apply and learn from the mistakes.”
Harris added that when Nesmith was invited to the Nike Elite program after his junior year, that also changed his perspective. “That took his mind to another level, like, ‘OK, I belong in this category.’ After that he didn’t have any limits, mentally, on what he could do.”
That’s when the 17-meter goal began to materialize. That ambition could go a long way for Nesmith as he matriculates to Kansas State with Edwards, joining the elite horizontal jumps corps that includes NCAA champs Selva Prabhu and Tah Chikoma, under jumps coach Clive Pullen and head coach Travis Geopfert.
Nesmith reflects on battling with his new teammate in Eugene: “I think that it was a pretty cool dynamic that we just kept pushing each other and I don’t think if either one of us wasn’t in the competition jumping the way we were, the other one probably wouldn’t have jumped as far, either,” he says. “After the competition, we talked about dominating the next level.”
Harris doesn’t believe the 17-meter standard will be the one in his protégé’s sights much longer. “If you interview him after… probably November… once he gets up there to K-State, he’ll probably say 18m!”
