A national champion leaper lives in Omaha.
Imani Skanes, a freshman at the College of St. Mary’s, made track and field history for the Flames by winning the long jump at the NAIA Indoor Championships in Gainesville, Fla., March 5-7. It’s the first national championship a Flame has won in any sport.
Skanes jumped 19 feet, 8 inches in the final to capture the gold.
“It means a lot, especially showing that we can always come together and do what some people probably couldn’t really do,” Skanes told Hurrdat Sports.
Skanes said that it’s an honor to win the title.
“I was pretty exhilarated,” Skanes said. “I was just thinking like, ‘I really just came out there and did what I had to do.’”
Skanes went into the finals in third place after jumping 19 feet, 2 inches, trailing Ottawa senior JayOnna Perry (19 feet, 4.7 inches) and Montana Tech senior Jadyn Vermillion (19 feet, 3.1 inches). She took the lead on her fifth jump and never looked back.
“Since I was in the finals, that’s the moment where I could just enjoy and have fun and just let everything loose,” Skanes said. “So with that being the mindset, and where I’m at, it made for that jump to be easier.”
Flames head coach Steve Gordon has known Skanes since she was 7, privately teaching her beginning as a sophomore in high school and taking over as her head coach when she joined his team.
Gordon said he was stunned initially when he realized Skanes had won.
“I’m watching the entire competition, I know she’s in the competition, and she’s doing well,” Gordon said. “We’re going into the finals in third place. I couldn’t see the board, so I heard her teammates in the crowd reacting to her jump, because we had seen it, but we have to wait and confirm the distance. When her distance popped up, I didn’t see it; I was the last one to see it. So, it was pretty exciting, but you’re in a national competition, everybody in the meet is capable, and going into the finals in third means that there are athletes behind you who have the final say. The national leader was the last one to jump after her, so we had to kind of wait and see.”
That wait proved to be worth it as her result held.
“I think the team was more excited than she was,” Gordon said. “I think there’s something in Imani that expects that she’s going to do well, and once she did, she actually said to me, ‘I just did it.’ She was very calm about it, and everyone else was going nuts. She very calmly confirmed that she did indeed just do that.”
The Omaha Northwest product began competing in track and field when she was 7, participating in long jump, triple jump, and the 100-meter dash. Her parents coached her until high school as she decided to continue participating in all three events.
She said that her love for long jump started with her family.
“It came from my parents and then progressed on to the feeling it gave me when I did well, and I finally got the movements down,” Skanes said. “I liked when you jump, and you land a good mark, and it feels good. It’s like, ‘Yeah, I want to continue this, I want to feel that again.’”
Skanes had offers from Omaha, Wichita State and College Saint Mary, choosing the Flames because of the environment.
“When I came here, they were very careful, they were very inviting, as well as the track and field program,” Skanes said. “It genuinely made me feel seen as an athlete, but as a person as well.”
The indoor track and field season has concluded, with the outdoor season set to begin with the Central Nebraska Challenge on March 28. Skanes said she’s hoping to jump farther next season, reaching the 20-foot mark, while Gordon wants to put the Flames on people’s radars.
“I’ve told anyone who will listen, track and field is one of the more fair and equal sports,” Gordon said. “You can compete against anyone if you have the marks and if you have the times. What Imani did proves that we can train top-level athletes here, even at a small school, at a medium-sized program, and go compete with anyone in the world. So, I think it let everyone know that we are absolutely open for business.”
