BY JON R. LaFOLLETTE | STAFF WRITER
MISSION — Even on a bad day, Jovanni Solis is tough to beat.
Despite competing with an injured right ankle in the girls triple jump during her last three meets, the McAllen Rowe sophomore has pulled through with consistent effort and improving distances.
After placing second on Feb. 27 at the McAllen ISD Invitational with a jump of 36 feet 3.25 inches, Solis has won back-to-back gold in the event, jumping a 36-04.25 at the Patriot Relays earlier this month before placing first with a distance of 36-11.75 on Thursday at the Rey Ramirez Relays at Tom Landry Stadium.
Solis’ podium-topping performance set a new Valley’s best for the season.
Solis first sprained her ankle during basketball season, but reaggravated it during the McAllen meet with a series of awkward landings. Though Solis kept competing despite the injury — she was assigned to different events in order to help the recovery process — she made her debut in the 800-meter run Thursday in order to keep the ankle loose.
“All we’re doing right now is keeping her in shape,” Rowe girls coach Lupe Soza said. “She ran her events nice today. Next week, I don’t know what we’re going to do. We may start to become more concentrated, but right now my main concern is district and getting her past the area meet.”
Solis won silver in the long and triple jump a season ago at the District 30-6A meet and has added 15 pounds of muscle since that time. As a result, her jumps are more powerful and her sprints are faster.
Along with the added strength, Solis is also focusing on the finesse in her jumps and controlling her body while she’s airborne.
“Whenever I jump, my arms go straight down,” Solis said. “I need to keep moving them and I don’t even know if I can do that, yet. I’m just focusing on my steps right now.
Soza says the biggest factor of Solis’ improvement is her ability to mesh her physical gifts with her mental fortitude. Soza refers to Solis as a bright athlete who doesn’t fully know her own strength or how to harness it just yet.
That’s not to say she hasn’t seen signs of her full potential.
“She’ll blows us away during practice and we’ll ask her what she was doing,” Soza said. “She’ll say, ‘Oh, I was just trying to see if I could do a jump this certain way.’ She’s just a kid. She doesn’t know how strong she really is yet. She’ll get there, though.”
MARC ON A MISSION
Marc Garcia waltzed through the boys 300 hurdles with ease Thursday, but walked away disappointed. Though he added another gold medal to his collection, his time of 40.53 seconds left him flustered and feeling empty.
Though Garcia holds the Valley’s third best time in the 300 hurdles (39.62), the two athletes ahead of him — La Joya Juarez-Lincoln’s Carlos Serna and McAllen High’s Joshua McGowen — double as district competition.
“At this point in the season, it’s all about trying to keep up with the times that are happening in district,” Garcia said. “I didn’t do that today. I’m actually pretty disappointed.”
Though McGowen and Serna were absent from Thursday’s meet, Garcia has competed against each of them at previous meets this season. Garcia hasn’t picked McGowen’s brain regarding training and practice itineraries, but has spoken with Serna and has tried emulating Juarez’s workouts in addition to his own, practicing the hurdles nearly 8 hours per week.
“Our hardest workouts are on Mondays, and the rest we focus on some of the smaller things like relays and sprints,” Garcia said. “At Juarez, they have our Monday workouts every day. So after my own practices, I stay a little later and keep pushing and striving to get to where I want to be.”