By Peggy Carroll
Christina Epps was coming up for her fifth jump of the day.
It was July 7, 2016, the day of the Olympics track and field trials in Eugene, OR.
As usual in Oregon, it was raining. But the weather did not disturb her. After all, she was to say, she was from New Jersey, where weather comes in all kinds.
Christina was competing in the triple jump and had to meet a high goal: The Olympics qualifying standard of 14.15 meters.
And the odds seemed to be against her. Although she has won multiple titles – including the 2015 USA track and field outdoor national triple-jump championship — she never had hit that mark before. Her personal best in outdoor events was 14.09 meters.
Nor did she start out well. Her first jumps were fouls. Her third jump at 13.48 meters put her back in contention. But that qualifying standard was one that few made.
Then came the fifth try.
Christina told herself: “You jump big. You’re going to jump big.”
This time, she thought she had. As she waited in the sand pit for the distance to be measured and the results announced, “My stomach dropped and I had butterflies,” she told reporters later. “I was just like, “oh man, let it be 14.15 meters.”
And it surpassed that. That fifth jump measured 14.17 meters. For those not tuned into the metric system, that’s 46 feet, 5 3/4 inches.
It was her new personal best. It was also three quarters of an inch above the Olympic standard. As one commentator noted, that’s about the width of a penny.
It put her in second place in the trials and it put her on the USA Olympic team. She had a ticket to Rio de Janeiro
A friend has started a GoFundMe campaign
to send Christina’s mom to the Summer Games.
Christina not only made personal history. She is being celebrated by Morristown High School, where she was a member of the class of 2009, and by Coppin State University, where she is the first graduate to compete in the Olympics.
AN EARLY START
Her mother, Beverly Epps-Blackwell is extremely proud of her daughter, the sixth of her seven children. But she can’t say she is very surprised.
From the time she was a little kid, Christina, now 25, showed signs of becoming an athlete.
“When she wasn’t skating, she was on the skateboard,” her mother recalls. “When she wasn’t on the skateboard, she was on a bicycle.”
And when she was four years old, even before she had entered kindergarten, the first thing on her Christmas list was a basketball.
Basketball, in fact, was her first love. She played at the Morristown Neighborhood House and at Frelinghuysen Middle School. In high school, she switched to volleyball – her mother’s sport.
Epps-Blackwell had played with a Bronx team in the year it won the borough championship.
And Christina did very well, Epps-Blackwell said, becoming a volleyball star.
It was at MHS, in her junior year, that Christina first learned the triple jump.
In her senior year, she hit 39 feet at the state championships.
Paul Buccino coaches the MHS boys track team, but Christina made a lasting impression. She was “dedicated, hard working, and always had a smile on her face,” he said.
“We used to joke at practice about how Tina would someday be in the Olympics, and finally that day has come!” said Allison Price, who regards her former high school teammate as both an “amazing athlete [and] also a wonderful person.”
“She never allowed a defeat to hinder her drive and motivation,” said Jamie Ehrenkranz, another teammate at MHS.
“Her behavior was contagious, and she always led the team to be the best we could be…Her passion for the sport, pride in her past and where she comes from, and of course, the joy that this sport brings Christina, are infectious,” Ehrenkranz said.
With the Colonials, Christina did the long jump and an occasional sprint in addition to the triple jump, Price said.
“She is extremely hard working, but also hard on herself and I know she put a tremendous amount of pressure on herself” at the Olympic trials, said Price.
“Her work ethic is so strong and proof of that is clear in the results…. I cannot think of anyone more deserving than her to be going to Rio.”
The Games start on Aug. 5.
HOP, SKIP AND JUMP
For those who pay attention to track and field only to count the medal winners from the USA, here’s a bit of information on Christina’s event.
Often called the “hop, skip and jump” or the “hop, step and jump,” the triple jump is similar to the long jump; they are called “horizontal jumps.”
The athlete runs down the track and performs a hop, a bound and then a jump into a sand pit.
The event is said to be inspired by the ancient Olympics and has been in the modern games since they began in 1896; the women’s event was added in in 1996.
No American woman has ever placed. The current records are 18.29 meters (60 ft.) for men and 15.50 meters rs (50 ft., 10 inches) for women.
COLLEGE CAREER
It was because of her record in both track and field and volleyball that Christina was offered a full scholarship at Coppin State. It was here that she came under the tutelage of Alecia Shields-Gadson, the school’s longtime women’s track and field and cross country coach.
Christina has credited Shields-Gadson with making her believe she could go to the Olympics level.
But it wasn’t an easy road.
In 2012, she hoped to compete for a spot on the US team for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. But a torn ACL that March knocked her out of the Olympic trials.
Her mother says she got the call about the injury. “A lot of screaming and a lot of crying,” she said. “Her heart was broken, torn apart more than her knee.”
Christina remembers watching those trials from home. It made her realize, she has said, that she had taken her skills for granted. And it inspired her to work even harder.
She also made a major change: She dropped volleyball to focus completely on the triple jump.
Not only did she have to deal with the physical aspects of a very physical sport, but with the personal loss of two people she loved. Her father, George Nicholson, died two years ago, and her maternal grandmother, who was very close to her, died in March.
Epps-Blackwell recalls reassuring her daughter that she would do well. After all her hard work, after the injuries, after the sacrifices she had made, and the grief she had endured, “God would not leave you there.”
In her years at Coppin, Christina racked up an impressive record.
She holds the Coppin State indoor and outdoor triple jump records. She has won six Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference triple jump titles – indoor and outdoor–and in 2014 earned the MEAC Woman of the Year award after placing seventh in the triple jump at the NCAA Division 1 indoor track and field championships, and 14th at the NCAA outdoor meet.
She also has done well academically. A psychology major, she graduated in 2014 with a 3.30 GPA and earned the university’s female student-athlete of the year award.
When she won the USA Track and Field Outdoor Championship in 2015, she was invited to the international Association of Athletics Federations World Championship, as one of the top 32 triple jumpers in the world.
Since her graduation, she has worked as an academic advisor in the athletic department and continued to train, guided by Shields-Gadson.
Shields-Gadson had faith in her all through the years. Christina later said that the coach had predicted that she would hit the 14.17 mark at the Olympic trials.
“How in the world did she know?” she told the Baltimore Sun.
OFF TO RIO
It has been two decades since the United States sent three women triple jumpers to the Olympics.
And by incredible coincidence, two of them are from Morris County. Keturah Orji of Mount Olive came in first.
The third woman is Andrea Geubelle of Lawrence, KN.
(Worth noting: Women from the Garden State almost made a clean sweep: Imani Oliver of Princeton came in fourth. )
This week, Christina reports to the US Olympic team’s training camp at Prairie View A&M University in Texas. The team will leave for Rio on Aug. 3. The triple jump qualifying round starts on Aug. 13.
Her mother and step-father, Kevin Blackwell, hope to be there to cheer for her.
Her brother, Philip and her sisters, Chante, Clarissa, Shamika, Tabitha and Tiffany will be crossing their fingers and sending their thoughts from New Jersey.
One local who plans to be in Rio is Councilwoman Hiliari Davis, who represents the Second Ward where Christina grew up, and where the jumper’s mom still resides.
“She is a focused woman,” Davis said of Christina. “We are all very excited about this. I made plans a couple years ago to be present in Rio for the Summer Olympics, never having a clue I’d be there to cheer on a hometown girl.”
Christina said she plans to enjoy the whole experience.
It is after all, her dream come true. But she told interviewers that the dream had not yet turned to reality in her own mind.
“In that moment of the opening ceremony,” she said, “I think it will hit me that I’m an Olympian.”
Kevin Coughlin contributed to this report.