A late start didn’t stop Johnston’s Jaida Bell from success in the long jump and triple jump

Jaida Bell stands at the end of a rubber-surfaced track.

The junior Johnston positions her left leg in front of her body, leans forward and inhales. She breaks into a full speed sprint, her toes connect with the take-off board and she jumps.

There’s a moment where Bell is suspended in the air before rushing into the sandbox at the end of the track.

Bell’s jump – to the untrained eye – looks a little complicated and a little dangerous, but that’s the point. His shins are scraped and cracked from several landings in the rough sand. Its white jumping tips are browned by this same sand.

Among the dozens of girls gathered at the south end of Dragon Stadium, Bell looks like any other high school athlete.

But Bell is among the best in the state in her events.

In fact, she’s one of the best in the country.

From Annoyance to All-American: Bell’s Return to Athletics

Bell participates in sports year-round.

High school and club volleyball occupy the fall and winter seasons, while high school and club athletics occupy the spring and summer.

Although Bell started athletics at a young age – around 6 or 7 – it wasn’t love at first sight for the sport.

“I hated it,” Bell laughed, remembering the early days of his track career. “I would scream to my mom before every practice, ‘Please don’t make me leave, please don’t make me leave.'”

Bell finished that season and subsequently walked away from the sport.

But she felt called back to the track because of an eighth-grade gymnastics class where she stood out as the fastest kid with the best times. She said to herself: why not give athletics another chance?

It turned out to be the right decision.

In high school track and field, Bell competed in several individual sprint and relay events, but it was the long jump where she truly excelled. His longest jump this year is 18 feet, seven inches – third best in the state. She finished second at the Drake Relays.

In club track and field, Bell is a two-time All-American in the triple jump. To become an All-American, an athlete must place in the top eight at a national competition. However, none of his All-American titles came easy.

She jumped just over 39 feet to win the 15-16 age division at the USATF National Junior Olympic Championships in Oregon. This competition took place in late July 2023, just six weeks after Bell added the triple jump to her repertoire.

His other All-American honor came at the AAU Junior Olympics at Drake, which took place shortly after the competition in Oregon. She took third place with a jump of 39 feet 2 ¾ inches, with tired legs and limited jumping.

“She only had two jumps, because she was coming back with tired legs from being in Eugene and it was also volleyball tryouts,” Bell’s club coach Jeff Johannes told Tornado Track , based in Urbandale.

“And her flight was delayed, she had to spend the night at the airport a few days before, sleeping on the floor. It was just a miserable time, and she still took third place. She is still a bronze medalist.

Bell becomes one of the best…in an event that doesn’t exist in Iowa high school sports

To understand why Bell’s success is so important, we have to go back in time a little.

Bell started doing the triple jump less than a year ago.

She took up the long jump just weeks before the start of the 2024 high school season.

The Johnston junior is so new to both events and yet she seems to have this natural inclination for both. Johannes saw something in her athlete and decided to trust her judgment.

“He thought I had the build for it,” Bell said. “Long legs, long stride. And this is something that he had taught before and he said, “I think you could be really good at this.” But (I thought) ‘All right, he says that about everything.’ Then in my first competition I jumped 38 feet, which is a really good start.

Aside from her build, Johannes’ coaching experience led him to believe she could land the triple jump. He knew that 400-meter runners tended to be good triple jumpers if they had the athletic ability to perform certain exercises. He saw that Bell was strong when she ran, and that translated into strong starts on the track.

The pieces were there and Bell learned quickly.

“I thought she could be really good,” Johannes said. “I didn’t think it was going to be this good.”

The most impressive part of Bell’s success, however, is that the triple jump is not an event that Iowa high schools compete in.

So when Bell goes to national competitions, she often competes against competitors who train in the triple jump year-round or, at least, regularly compete in the event at high school competitions.

Although it differs from the triple jump, the long jump – recently added to Bell’s workload – helps him focus on jumps during the high school season and gives him a chance to win the Drake Relays and the state titles while competing in a Johnston uniform.

“It’s pretty similar,” Bell said of the difference between the two events. “Some of the same mechanisms apply. I don’t think I’m going to lose the triple just because I don’t train for it (in high school), but I always do something that will help me stay strong in the triple.

Being a two-event jumper also makes Bell a more attractive recruit to colleges.

Bell is already on the radar of several Division I programs. She has visited and spoken to coaches from state and out-of-state schools, but, in track and field, athletes typically don’t receive offers until the start of their senior year.

“If they were a dual threat – say in the long jump and triple jump, which they are now – I would take an athlete who could do two events and give them a scholarship,” Johannes said.

Sky is the limit for Johnston junior

Bell has one more season of club and high school athletics before graduation.

She has set some tough goals for herself, including regaining her All-American titles, winning another national championship and winning a state title at the high school track and field meet, which runs May 16-18 in Monks.

“Accomplish everything I can,” Bell said.

Johannes sees something else in the cards for his fast-learning athlete.

Ten years ago — in 2014 — Urbandale’s Lexus Lovan jumped 19 feet, 10 ¼ inches to set the all-time long jump record in Iowa.

Lovan is Johannes’ daughter.

As a father, he does not want his daughter’s record to be broken. But if anyone does, he’d like it to be one of the athletes he’s coached. Johannes thinks it’s possible that Bell will be the one to break Lovan’s record.

“I think it will take this year and next year to get there,” Johannes said. “But I feel like out of everyone I’ve coached, she has the ability to do it.”

Alyssa Hertel is the college sports recruiting reporter for the Des Moines Register. Contact Alyssa at [email protected] or on Twitter @AlyssaHertel.

This article originally appeared on the Des Moines Register: Johnston’s Jaida Bell is one of the top jumpers at the Iowa state track and field meet.