By Brandon Wright, Times Correspondent
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
SEFFNER
When Armwood's Dejoun Dennard was a little girl, classmates used to poke fun at her unusual name, which phonetically pronounced is Dee-john.
"Oh yeah, I heard it all the time," Dennard said. "They used to call me mustard."
Now it's appropriate to call Dennard something else — historic.
Dennard won the triple jump at last week's Vernon Korhn Hillsborough County Track and Field Championships with a mark of 36 feet, 5.5 inches. And in doing so, she became the first female in Armwood history to capture a county track and field title.
"I had a good day," Dennard said. "But I think I can do better."
And there are plenty of reasons to suggest Dennard's best is yet to come. The sophomore just started learning the intricate event last year when she could barely break the 28-foot mark.
"She's able to take the information she gets and understand it quickly," coach Evan Davis said. "She's made some great progress in a short amount of time."
The triple jump is an event most know nothing about, few understand and even fewer can perform. Triple jumpers run down a long straightaway and successively jump twice off the same foot before using the opposite foot to leap into the sand pit. It requires speed and strength, but also a tremendous amount of timing, rhythm and coordination, to do properly.
"It's a lost art," Davis said. "Most people don't know a whole lot about it."
Because the triple jump is an event that flies so far under America's sports radar, much of the video teaching Davis does comes off YouTube clips.
Dennard, who also plays basketball for the Hawks, said her friends are dumbfounded when she tries to explain the event.
"I show them what I do and they try it and just can't do it," she said "They are like 'Who does this?' "
In her first county championships last season, Dennard jumped nearly 4 feet shorter than her mark at this year's event. Her ability to process the techniques of the triple jump — sometimes on the fly — make Dennard the favorite to take the title at Thursday's district championships.
"Sometimes she can literally be in between jumps and I tell her something and she makes the adjustments," Davis said. "At the Charles Johnson (Invitational), she went from 34 feet to 35 feet to (a personal best) 36 feet, 10 inches just by processing the right adjustments."
Dennard also isn't content with her current status. She is just a half inch away from the school record in the triple jump and an inch away from a Hawks' best in the long jump.
Dennard said she plans on breaking both before the season ends.
"After she jumped 36 (feet) 10 (inches), I asked her if she was happy," Davis said. "Dejoun said no because she wanted to break those school records."
Dennard also takes honors classes at Armwood and carries a 3.7 grade point average. She plans to study psychology in college and Davis thinks Dennard has a good chance of continuing her triple jump career at the next level.
"If she keeps progressing, I think she can definitely jump at the Division I level," he said. "Plus she can also play basketball and has good academics. Really, she is a college coach's dream."
But college can wait. Dennard first has her sights sets on the upcoming district meet. If all goes as planned she'll advance, follow that up by improving on her fifth-place effort at last year's regionals and finish the season at states.
"She's athletic, she's smart, she listens and she wants to get better," Davis said. "Kids like that don't come along very often and it's the reason why I coach."
Brandon Wright can be reached at hillnews@sptimes.com.