Skipping All The Way To The Track

Harvard has its crossover athletes. There’s Melanie Baskind, who plays both soccer and lacrosse; Cara Sprague, who competes in cross-country and skiing; and Nina Kucharczyk, a field hockey and lacrosse player. But who knew that lurking within the ranks of the Crimson’s distinguished track and field team is a world-ranking jump roper.

If you search sophomore Christine Reed’s name on YouTube, you’ll find the pole-vaulter and heptathlete jumping at a dizzying speed to Lil Wayne’s “A Milli.” Her concentration and confidence makes the sport seem effortless.

But Reed’s jumping mastery shouldn’t belie the sport’s difficulty. The track and field star’s journey to achieve this level was a challenging one, filled with hectic schedules but also lifelong friendships.

“I met her back when she was in first grade,” said Reed’s jumping coach of 11 years Cindy Joy. “She was a very good athlete from the beginning, but I had no idea how successful she would go on to be.”

Reed was introduced to jumping rope in kindergarten. The American Heart Association branch from Santa Claire, Ca. advertised a jumping class at an assembly in her school. Reed and her closest five year-old friends pounced on the opportunity. Little did she know at the time that this newfound passion would take her to far reaches of the globe.

“I coached Christine right through her junior year of high school,” Joy fondly recalls. “We traveled so much together—to Australia, Belgium, and Canada [for the world championships]. We became very close. She’s every coach’s dream.”

Reed perfected her coordination as a jumper, but managing school and sports was a whole other balancing act. Beyond doing track and traveling internationally for jump rope, she was president of her high school class and an accomplished student.

“Jumping and doing track together was really hard on my body,” Reed acknowledged. “I even suffered a stress fracture in my foot.”

As demanding as Reed’s schedule was from elementary through high school, it instilled a level of maturity early on in her life that was absent in her peers.

“[Jumping] made me physically and mentally strong from a young age,” Reed said. “I was only 12 when I went to my first world championship in Belgium. It’s definitely taught me a lot about how to compete—especially the importance of creativity and innovation.”

But with such an exhausting array of activities and schoolwork, the trade-off between jumping rope and track was inevitable—one that Reed cites as the hardest decision of her life.

“I gave up competitive jumping to concentrate on track,” Reed explains. “It was really difficult for me.”

The emotional transition was not without rewards. Right where Reeds competitive jumping career ended, her collegiate track career took flight.

She ranks ninth all-time in Harvard’s record books in the heptathlon after last year’s 4,231-point performance.

Reed has also had a successful indoor season thus far. She placed third in the pentathlon at this year’s Heptagonal Championships.

Track and jumping haven’t been mutually exclusive for Reed, as many of the skills she gained from jumping have been instrumental to her success on the field.

“I’m her training partner, and I really think that jumping rope has spring-boarded her into a really hard worker,” observed Reed’s roommate and teammate, sophomore Nicole Silva. “She consistently pushes herself to do better, train harder. Jumping is definitely a key source of her motivation.”

Nine years of competitive jumping also crafted Reed into a fine leader, one who has learned first-hand the values of communication and cooperation.

“Chemistry with my fellow jumpers was really key, as far as collaborating routines went,” Reed notes. “That’s certainly carried over for me on the track and even beyond.”

Reed may enjoy jumping, but if there’s one thing that excites her more than strategically twirling a rope, it’s teaching her friends how to do it.

Indeed, when the Crimson’s track and field squad held its annual talent show at Texas Southern Relays over spring break, Reed and a few of her teammates lit up the stage with a jumping routine. Despite going up against formidable competition—a poetry session and a rendition of “Super Trooper” by the freshmen throwers—Reed and company came away with the top prize.

One might think that it would be intimidating to perform a jumping routine alongside a world-caliber competitor.

“Not at all,” Silva promptly dismisses. “There was this simple routine that our whole group did together, and then Christine and I transferred off into our wheel routine. She’s a phenomenal teacher. She made it really fun in an acrobatic sort of way.”

Although Reed won’t be making appearances on the competitive jumping circuit, she looks forward to staying involved with the sport in a new capacity. In addition to currently teaching a class at her home gym, she hopes to form a jumping team after college, coach, or serve as a competition judge. Given Reed’s work ethic and the respect she commands from friends and teammates alike, this goal is well within reach.

“Christine has always been extremely disciplined,” Joy emphasizes. “She’s never been one to cheat anybody out of giving them her full effort. That’s what made letting her go so hard for me.”