JUMP FOR JOY
Cunningham, daughter of NFL great QB, has eye on gold
He took our breath away with a football in his hand and racehorse legs that made him a Lethal Weapon quarterback for the Eagles and Vikings. And now, all these years later, Randall Cunningham gives us an 18year-old chip off the old block who could very well take the whole world’s breath away.
Her name is Vashti Cunningham, and she is such a phenom high jumper that everyone agrees the sky is the limit for her when she soars for a gold medal in Rio de Janeiro, where the man who trained her, Pastor Randall now at Remnant Ministries, and football coach at Silverado High School in Las Vegas, will be cheering her on.
And the fatherly advice he has given her, well, she’ll be hearing his voice as the moment of truth arrives.
“Remember that she’s just a kid,” Cunningham said by phone. “What I mean by that is the pressure and the focus, all come at the same time. She just has to remember she’s having fun, and when she does and she goes in and she does that, she does great.
“I just teach her that, ‘You’re a kid. Go out and have fun, the pressure’s on all of these world champions.’ When it comes time for her to do something, she’s been taught how to be under composure when the pressure’s on.”
Vashti, who is 6-foot-1, won the DNA exacta. Her mother, Felicity, was a graceful South African ballet dancer, and one look at Vashti tells you she is the daughter of Randall Cunningham. And the resemblance doesn’t stop there: She likes it when the stakes are big and only mean the world.
“She’s the kind of person that when the light shines, she continues doing what she’s doing and she just gets more focused,” Cunningham said.
Vashti Cunningham hates to lose. Like father, like daughter.
“Her temperament’s a lot like mine,” Cunningham said. “I just don’t like to lose at anything. Whether it’s playing a board game, or competing in anything, I don’t want to lose. If it’s a potato-sack race, I gotta win, and she’s like that.”
Cunningham, 53, was a high jumper in high school before making his name in football at UNLV. His son, Randall II, a sophomore at USC, became the only freshman All-America high jumper in 2015. Randall has diligently studied the Russians and Europeans and Americans alike, and transferred all the wisdom to Vashti. Father knows best sometimes.
“I study a lot of people, but I don’t try to copy everybody’s regimen,” Cunningham said. “We don’t teach everything by the book, but the way we train is we don’t burn our kids out.”
No one believes this will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Vashti. But it is the first one for the Cunningham family.
“We finally get an opportunity to be in a big event like a Super Bowl,” Cunningham said. “I’ve been to the NFC Championship, I’ve been to Pro Bowls, I’ve been in the Hall of Fame Game prior to the inductees coming in there. I’ve been to Super Bowls. The thing about the Olympics is it’s everybody in the world. It’s not just America. And we’ve had an opportunity to watch Vashti become a world champion competing against some of the greatest jumpers in the world. And to know that the top jumper in the world right now is an American named Chaunte Lowe, Ohmigod, what a blessing that is. Vashti and Chaunte are friends, Chaunte gives her a couple of tips now and then, but they’re both competitive when the time comes.”
It is all surreal for him right now.
“I think it more becomes a reality when you get there,” Cunningham said. “The focal point for all us right now as a family is to train, to relax and to prepare our hearts and minds, we need to get ready for the time change and things like that.”
Vashti broke her national high-school high-jump re- cord by clearing 6 feet, 6 ¹ /4 inches (1.99 meters) at the U.S. Indoor Track and Field Championships in March. She is the youngest woman ever to win the high jump at the World Indoor Championships. To the victor belong the spoils — a white Mercedes bought by dad.
“She’s got more in her,” Cunningham said. “She’s a lot like me in she just trains harder and harder the closer it gets.”
It’s getting closer and closer. And Randall Cunningham is more than ready for his teenage daughter to jump higher and higher.