Late start didn't stop Johnston's Jaida Bell from success in long jump and triple jump

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

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

There is a second when Bell is suspended in mid-air before she careens into the sand pit at the end of the runway.

Bell’s jump – to the untrained eye – looks a bit messy and a little dangerous, but that’s the point. Her shins are scratched and cracked by several landings in the rough sand. Her white jumping spikes are browned by that same sand.

Among the dozens of girls gathered on 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 nation.

From annoyance to All-American: Bell’s return to track and field

Bell participates in sports year-round.

High school and club volleyball fill the fall and winter seasons, and high school and club track and field take over the spring and summer.

Even though Bell started track at a young age – around 6 or 7 – it wasn’t a love-at-first-sight situation with the sport.

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

Bell finished that season and then stepped away from the sport.

But she felt called back to the track because of an eighth-grade gym class when she stood out as the fastest kid with the best times. She thought, why not give track and field another chance?

That’s proven to be the right decision.

In high school track and field, Bell competes in several individual and relay sprint events, but the long jump is where she truly excels. Her 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 needs to place in the top eight in a national meet. Neither of her All-American titles came easy, though.

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

Her other All-American honor came at the AAU Junior Olympic Games at Drake, held shortly after the meet in Oregon. She took third with a jump of 39 feet, 2 ¾ inches, and that was on tired legs and with limited jumps.

“She only got two jumps, because she was coming back on tired legs from being in Eugene and it was also volleyball tryouts,” Jeff Johannes, Bell’s club coach at Tornado Track, which is based in Urbandale, said.

“And her flight got delayed, she had to spend the night in the airport just days before, sleeping on the ground. It was just a miserable time, and she still took third. She’s 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 significant, you need to go back in time a bit.

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

She took on the long jump just a few 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 to both. Johannes saw something in his athlete, and she decided to trust his judgment.

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

Outside of her build, Johannes’ coaching experience led him to believe she could succeed in the triple jump. He knew that 400-meter runners tended to be good triple jumpers if they had the athletic ability to do certain drills. He saw that Bell was strong when she ran, and that translates to strong starts on the runway.

The pieces were there, and Bell learned quickly.

“I thought she could be really good,” Johannes said. “I didn’t realize it was gonna be that good.”

The most impressive part about Bell’s success, though, is that the triple jump isn’t an event Iowa high schools compete in.

So, when Bell travels to national meets, she often faces competitors who train in the triple jump year-round or, at least, get to compete in that event regularly at high school meets.

Although it differs from the triple jump, the long jump – recently added to Bell’s workload – helps her focus on jumps during the high school season and gives her a chance to win Drake Relays and 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 mechanics apply. I don’t think I’ll lose the triple just because I’m not training for it (in high school), but I’m always doing something that will help me stay strong in the triple.”

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

Bell is already on the radar of several Division I programs. She’s taken visits and talked to coaches from both in- and out-of-state schools but, with track, athletes typically don’t land any offers until the beginning of their senior year.

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

Sky’s the limit for the Johnston junior

Bell has another season of club and high school track and field before graduation.

She set some tough-to-achieve goals, which include reclaiming her All-American titles, winning another national championship and taking home a state title at the high school track meet, which runs May 16-18 in Des Moines.

“Just accomplish as much as I can,” Bell said.

Johannes sees something else in the cards for his quick-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 isn’t rooting for his daughter’s record to be broken. But if anyone does it, he’d like it to be one of the athletes he trained. Johannes thinks it is possible that Bell could be the one to break Lovan’s record.

“I think it will take this year and next year to do it,” Johannes said. “But I feel like, out of anyone I’ve ever coached, she’s got the ability to do it.”

Alyssa Hertel is the college sports recruiting reporter for the Des Moines Register. Contact Alyssa at ahertel@dmreg.com or on Twitter @AlyssaHertel.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Johnston's Jaida Bell is one of top jumpers at Iowa state track meet