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This article is from the EMU News Archive. Current EMU new is available at www.emu.edu/news
Driver Leaps Into May
Photo courtesy of EMU Athletics
The 3:30 a.m. wake-up calls as a teen-ager prepared Wendy Driver for these moments.
Milking cows on her family’s farm near Clover Hill taught her responsibility and discipline. Carrying slop to pig troughs helped make her strong.
So when the 22-year-old Eastern Mennonite University senior had to juggle a nursing major, an impending marriage and her final season of track-and-field, it wasn’t too much of a problem.
"You’re looking at a girl who got up early in the morning almost every day to either drive to her clinicals for nursing or to go and lift weights," EMU track coach Seth McGuffin said. "It didn’t feel great all the time, but she still did it. It’s the hard work and dedication that came out from farming."
All of that work paid dividends Saturday. The 2001 Turner Ashby High School graduate triple-jumped 37-feet, 7¾ inches at the Old Dominion Athletic Conference championships at EMU, winning the event, provisionally qualifying for the NCAA Division III meet and topping her previous best leap by almost a foot.
Driver said she’s improved every year since she started as a freshman in high school, but even she was surprised Saturday when she saw her distance.
"I was like no way. I was pretty excited," she recalled.
She’d probably be even more excited if she made waves at the D-III meet, but that appears to be a long-shot. The winning triple jump at the 2004 Championships was a 42-0 by McMurry University senior Darcell Edwards.
Driver’s ticket to the nationals is only half-punched. By provisionally qualifying for the 2005 NCAA meet, she’s met the minimum standard – not the automatic threshold -- meaning she could be bumped if other athletes jump farther.
Regardless, her performance last weekend was stellar.
Driver’s career-best leap Saturday came on her first jump, and it held up against the competition all day. Driver fouled a couple more jumps that would have landed in the 37-foot range, but even they weren’t as far as Jump No. 1.
McGuffin wasn’t surprised Driver made that jump. Despite her uber-hectic schedule, she’s always found time for track.
"When I say, ‘Wendy, let’s do this, this and this,’ there is no question, no ‘why are we doing this?’" McGuffin said. "It’s, ‘Let’s go out and do it.’ Her upbringing had a benefit."
Driver’s leap into May gives her one last diversion before college life dissolves into the real world. She graduates Sunday.
"Track has been such a big part of my life for so long that it’s hard to give up," Driver said. "So I decided that I would practice as much as I could and compete in as many meets as I would have time for and see what happens."
After graduation this weekend, she’ll spend the next month training for nationals. Then, she’ll finish up preparations for her wedding to Dayton resident Vincent Rhodes on July 23 at the Montezuma Church of the Brethren.
A honeymoon at an unknown destination – Rhodes hasn’t picked the place yet – is the last little vacation before Driver starts work as a nurse on the orthopedic floor of Rockingham Memorial Hospital.
Plus, she’ll have to help Rhodes work with the 85 cattle and the crops on their new Dayton farm – the one previously owned by Rhodes’ parents.
As for rest?
"Maybe in the winter," Driver said. "I like to stay busy, though. It keeps me motivated and energized."
Soon enough, one of her multitude of activities will end, replaced by the unpredictability of working in a hospital.
And, of course, life on the farm.
