Her heartbeat pulsed in her ear while overwhelming cheers filled the field as she prepared herself for the triple jump. The horn blared, and she was off. The fans, team members and coaches encouraged her as her feet hit the pavement.
“Just get to the pit, get to the pit,” repeated in her head as she tried to keep her feet balanced and correctly placed on the track, preparing for her jump. All the hard work she put in was paying off as she leaped over the dirt. Everything stood still as she flew over the pits further than ever before. She hit the ground and was brought back into reality.
With this jump, senior Kyndal McKnight had broken Marcus’s record she’d previously set. McKnight’s record for triple jump was 41’3 feet, but in April, she jumped 42’2.5 feet. The record she had originally broke in 2016 had been held for years.
Currently McKnight is ranked second in triple jump in the nation and is headed to compete at the UIL State Championship in Austin, May 11-13.
Her coaches were pushing her to break a record, due to it being her senior year. She said they are even hoping she’ll break one more before she graduates. When McKnight set it the first time she knew it was something to be proud of. Breaking that record was something she never imagined be able to do twice.
“You know that you’re always trying to work for something bigger than yourself,” McKnight said.
McKnight has always been athletic. Ever since she was six, her dad put her in every sport that was available to her. Even though she tried almost everything, McKnight choose track for the long run. Without track, she doesn’t think she would be where she is today.
“At one point I was discouraged with track because you sometimes reach a point where you don’t progress and you feel stuck,” McKnight said. “So I thought to try something else, so I tried triple jump and found out I was good at it.”
In the beginning of her high school career, McKnight hadn’t chosen yet what college to go to. However, after receiving a scholarship from Louisiana State University, she is now excited to graduate high school and begin at LSU.
“Even though track is an individual sport, you still have a team and you can’t let your team down,” McKnight said.
