A Records-Rich Rebound For Jasmine Moore

You could call it the rebirth of Jasmine Moore as a jumper. Florida’s jump star won her fifth and sixth NCAA titles in Albuquerque and became the first in American history to top both 7-meters in the long jump and 15 in the triple.

As impressive as that sounds, it’s even more laudable when one realizes what the 21-year-old went through to get atop that podium again. By any measure, last year was a successful campaign for Moore: a clean sweep of SEC and NCAA titles in both jumps indoors and out, plus she made the team in both events for the World Championships.

Yet she pointed everything at the Worlds in Eugene, where she had hoped to put up a good fight against the world’s best after failing to make the triple jump final in Tokyo the summer before. However, she struggled, missing the final in both of her jumps by just one place.

“Worlds was very difficult for me,” she explains. “It was super hard, you know? Whenever you miss finals by one spot, in two events, it’s like… dang. It hurt.

“I remember going back to school in the fall. I was like, I do not want to be here. During track season last year, I found out my dad had cancer. That was really hard for me. So just to come back to school, I was like, I don’t want to be here because I just feel like I need to be with my family. I wasn’t really happy with track at the moment because the last time I did it, it didn’t go well.”

Eventually, Moore turned it around. It helped that her father recovered well from his health scare. She made the decision to channel her disappointment on the Eugene runway into what became the best winter of training in her life.

“I definitely pushed myself harder in the weight room,” she says. “I didn’t go super hard last year because I had just transferred here. We were trying to figure that all out, as far as what worked for me. So going into this year, we knew what did work for me and we pushed a lot harder on that. And then on my running and my plyos, I went up on the volume this fall. I pushed myself all around a lot harder than I did the year before.”

You saw the results in Albuquerque. Moore came in once again the double SEC champion, with season bests of 22-8 (6.91) and 47-4½ (14.44). On Friday, she attacked the long jump, nailing a big 23-¾ (7.03) on her opening effort. That added more than 3…