Ellington high jumper Luoma pushes through family tragedy to succeed

ELLINGTON – Jenna Luoma landed on her back on the high jump mat at the Class M indoor track championships last Saturday and in the stands, her mother held her breath. She had seen the high jump bar fall before.

But the bar stayed up.

“Oh my God, we just screamed,” Cindy Luoma said. “We were all screaming. I was so afraid to scream at the wrong moment. As soon as she landed and I saw the bar still sitting there – we were all freaking out. It was amazing.”

Luoma is a freshman at Ellington High. The past few weeks have been a nightmare for her and her family. On Feb. 2, her father Kevin Luoma passed away unexpectedly at age 46.

Eight days later, Jenna won the Class M high jump title with a personal best jump of 5 feet. She started high jumping a month ago.

“We were having the worst week you could ever possibly imagine,” Cindy said Thursday. “I sat down with her, and I was like, ‘Listen, if you don’t want to do this, it’s OK. If you want to do it, it’s OK.’ She looked at me and she said, ‘Mom, Dad would want me to do this.’”

And now Luoma will compete at the State Open indoor track championships Saturday at the Floyd Little Athletic Center in New Haven.

“It really helped me cope with the situation,” Jenna said. “I really enjoy this sport. When I’m at practice, I feel like everything’s pushed to the side and I can just do my thing.”

Kevin Luoma was a baseball player at Tolland High. He was supportive of Jenna’s running, and he was often at meets, cheering or videotaping or just offering advice and words of encouragement to his daughter, an only child.

“He knew the right thing to say,” Cindy said. “If she was having an off day, I would say the worst thing like, ‘Oh, you got it!’ She’d say, ‘Don’t say that.’

“He would always have the right thing to say. That was his girl.”

Jenna ran track in seventh grade and cross country and track in eighth grade. Some of the high school girls reached out to her last summer and she began to run to prepare for high school cross country.