High jumper takes SEC Championship in Arkansas
Head track coach Curtis Frye wasn’t sure what drew him to recruit St. Lucia native Jeannelle Scheper to South Carolina, but he said it may have been her socks.
When Frye first met Scheper, she was competing at the Caribbean Junior Championships, known as the CARIFTA Games, when she was 15, wearing knee socks with bright stripes. Although she took third place in the high jump, Frye said her personal record in the event was “good but not great.”
But in her junior year at South Carolina, Scheper became the first Gamecock in school history to win an SEC high jump championship, helping USC to a sixth-place finish overall. Scheper qualified to compete at indoor nationals, which will take place later this week, with her jump of 6 feet, 1.5 inches.
“Competing with them at SECs and winning definitely did a lot for the mental aspect of my jumping because now I know that I’m capable of not only jumping at the same level, but winning in competition,” Scheper said.
Scheper will be one of five individual athletes to compete for South Carolina at NCAA Indoor Championships in Fayetteville, Ark. The top 16 individuals and top 12 relay teams in each event received invitations to the event.
USC’s lone qualifier from the men’s team was senior long jumper Jarrod Hutchen. On the women’s side, junior Petra Olsen will compete in the pole vault, sophomore Erika Rucker will compete in the 400-meter run and senior Kierre Beckles will compete in the 60 hurdles. The women’s 4x400 relay also qualified.
This weekend, the team traveled to three different invitationals in attempts to earn a bid to nationals. Senior Breanna Radford just missed a nationals bid in shot put with a throw that ranked 18th in the collegiate ranks for the season. But she set a new personal record with her throw, which was also the second longest in school history, at a qualifying meet at LSU.
At the Alex Wilson Invitational at Notre Dame, senior distance runner Robert Razick set his second USC record in two weeks. After breaking a school record in the mile at SEC Championships, he set a new mark in the 3,000 with a time of 8:16. But he was still several seconds away from qualifying for nationals.
In the third meet, the Virginia Tech Final Qualifier, two Gamecocks finished in the top three of their events. Freshman Alexis Murphy ran a personal best in the 60 meters to take third place, while graduate student Chelsea France took third in the 3,000 run.
Scheper has lofty personal goals for nationals this weekend, but she said she looks forward to seeing how well the women’s team as a group can perform. The junior wants to set a personal record by jumping 6 feet, 4 inches and “most definitely place in the top eight, hopefully the top three.”
“It means a lot to me that I can contribute to making the team better, to us growing,” Scheper said. “We talk a lot about getting to the mountaintop and being among the best, and I’m happy that I can help get my team to that place.”