The Arroyo Grande High School Eagles trounced the Bearcats from Paso Robles in track and field March 25, putting up 86 points to Paso’s 48. Key to the Eagles’ victory was junior Josephine Graeber, who launched herself 17 feet to win the long jump and managed to hop and bound 36 feet and 4 inches to win the triple jump.
Arroyo Grande jumping coach James Brown said “I do feel good,” in the style of the late singer, and thinks that Graeber is one of the best athletes he’s ever coached.
“She could be my all-time favorite, I dunno,” he said. “When I’m coaching Josephine, I feel like a college coach. You sit there and it vibes. She comprehends everything, and she can do everything.”
Graeber might not do everything, but she gets close enough. During the summer and fall, she plays tennis. During the winter, she holds down the midfield for Eagles’ soccer. And during the spring, she becomes a kind of one-woman track team, tackling a whole gamut of events. Long jump and triple jump are her stalwarts, but she can sprint and run hurdles, and her coaches also have her trying the high jump and experimenting with the pole vault.
This versatility, explained coach Brown, comes with a special quality of Graeber’s he calls “ballistic-ness.” It’s a combination of power and speed that lends itself to explosive movement.
“You’re trying to train the muscles to not move a lot of weight slowly. You want to be able to get off the ground,” Brown said.
Graeber attributed her strength in track to the cross training she gets through soccer, which she’s played on varsity for the past two years.
“Soccer definitely has the speed that I use on the track,” she said. “I can do those hundred sprints. Jumping for headers and stuff is really nice, so I can jump higher.”
Her goal is to break the school records for long and triple jump. College is still a year out, but she’s thinking about majoring in sports medicine or kinesiology. Right now, her focus is short-term—to practice “getting up” onto the board for the long jump, honing her speed and technique and adding a shorter step before she launches herself into the sand.
“I guess I just like its simplicity,” she said. “You just run, and you jump. People think it’s really easy, but when you look at it, it’s not.”
This article appears in Apr 2-9, 2015.