Speed Spinners Bring Home Multiple Medals From Regional Competition
August 1st, 2008
Originally published in The Coronado Eagle & Journal on August 1, 2008
Click here for original article
By Nina McDonald
CORONADO, Calif. — Coronado’s Speed Spinners, a competition jump rope team, won a gold medal at the July 9 – 20 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) West Coast Junior Olympic Games in Reno, Nev.
Coach Melinda Everett said, “When it came to single rope freestyle, I thought they really blew away their competitors.”
Ten-year-old Alexandra Keamy took the all-around gold medal, winning the single rope freestyle and speed jump and placing second in double-unders. “She worked really hard, practicing two to three hours a day, five days a week. She is really competing above her age level,” said Everett.
Hannah Downey and Hanna Fallon took second and third respectively in the 11-year-old age group and second in double-unders. Catheran White took third overall in the single female, 13 to14-year-old age group. White took second place with her partner Alicia Martinez in the pairs event in the 15 to 17-year-old age group and Martinez placed second overall in the single female 15 to 17 group. All four girls took first place in the double Dutch event.
“This was really a big deal for them. They had to qualify in order to even enter the competition. This is huge. It’s the biggest jump rope competition they can go to right now,” said Everett. Everett thinks that next year, if the squad can raise enough money the girls will be ready for the nationals.
The AAU West Coast Junior Olympic Games Jump Rope competition is one of the biggest events in the country for competitive jump rope. Only the AAU National Junior Olympic Games in Detroit is bigger. However the Super Bowl of the sport is the USA Jump Rope Competition at Disney World in Orlando, Fla. Thousands of jumpers participate in the Orlando event, compared to a few hundred in the AAU events. Everett hopes that one day the girls will be good enough to compete at that level. According to Everett they are almost there now.
“Right now if they had gone to Detroit, it would have been too much for them. But they will probably go next year. They placed in the top 10 teams regionally, that qualifies them to go now, but the pressure and level of competition is just so much greater in Detroit. I think it was probably better to wait,” said Everett.
Everett herself is one of the top competitors in the United States today. She qualified for the USA Jump Rope event on the No. 1 team in California this year. She ended up not going simply because of finances. Everett said that the team is supported to some extent by donations from service organizations such as the Optimist Club of Coronado, but having a sponsor would allow the team to participate in the national events. “It was around $1,000 and we just couldn’t afford it at the time,” she explained.
Modern jump rope sport has evolved into a dazzling array of high speed jumps, tricks and gymnastic tumbling. In the last 30 years the sport has soared in popularity and has become as organized and competitive as any other school sport. Since 1995 a single organization, USA Jump Rope (USAJR) has lead in governing American jump rope competitions. USAJR sanctions jump rope workshops, camps, seminars and tournaments at the state, regional and national levels and provides representation for the sport at an international level. USAJR also regulates standards for terminology and procedures for jump rope competitions. The AAU stepped up to the plate a few years ago and also began sanctioning competitions at the AAU Junior Olympic Games, however the USAJR remains the primary umbrella for the sport.
Participants compete in a variety of both individual and group disciplines. There are timed events where competitors must try and jump as many times as they can within a certain time-frame. The pace is breathtaking. The world record for the 30-second speed jump is 188 jumps. There are also double and triple speed jumps, where the rope must pass twice or three times under the person’s feet before they touch the ground. At top levels even quadruple and quintuple jumps are not uncommon. A competitive male jumper in the U.S. must be able to do at least 200 triples in a row. In order to compete in the World Championships as part of Team USA, a jumper must place in the top three in the U.S. in his or her discipline.
Points can be won or lost on small technicalities such as a rope catching on a lose ponytail which is considered a miss. Attitude is also important; competitors must keep smiling at all costs. “These girls are so great,” said Everett of her team members. “They even practice with a smile.”
Freestyle routines, often set to music, amaze audiences with performers executing back flips, cartwheels and other gymnastic feats through whizzing double ropes, often in teams of four or more people. Everett describes one trick called the Chinese Wheel that sounds almost impossibly complicated. The jumpers begin to jump and eventually start weaving in and out, under and through each other’s ropes, all the while turning their teammate’s ropes, but not their own. “It’s our circus act,” Everett said with a grin. “It’s way cool, you can do so many types of things.”
Born and raised in Coronado (CHS class 1998), Everett joined the Speed Spinners jump rope team while in sixth grade at Coronado Middle School. Everett was instantly hooked and dedicated herself to the sport, eventually earning a gold medal in the first jump rope event for Junior Olympics in 1995 and placing third in a subsequent Nationals competition. A year after graduating from high school, she took over as coach for the club. Everett now lives in Imperial Beach with her husband.
Everett has been jumping rope competitively for the past 16 years and finally launched her own business last summer, USA Jump Stars, a jump rope class that she is marketing to San Diego area schools as an extra-curricular sport. Everett’s business has taken off since she started it. She currently teaches classes in more than 40 locations around the county.
Speed Spinners now has 25 members, from elementary school to college age. While Everett enjoys competition herself and hopes to compete in Orlando again someday, her real love is training and performing with the Speed Spinners. The 28-year-old, who looks almost as young as some of the high schoolers she coaches, is passionate about both the sport and the children she teaches. “I love what I do. I get a kick out of their performance routines. I love it when they hit it and just nail a routine. I am so proud of them.”
The Coronado Speed Spinners came home with medals from the AAU West Coast Jr. Olympics in Reno, Nev. From left: Catheran White, Alicia Martinez, Hanna Fallon, Alexandra Keamy and Hannah Downey. Photo courtesy of the Speed Spinners
