Possible national championship has jump rope club jumping for joy

The Carolina Jump Rope Club is hosting the 2019 National Collegiate Jump Rope Championship and University Summit at UNC this weekend for the first time. 

Presidents Noah Mancuso, a senior majoring in chemistry at UNC and global health at Duke, and Graham Booth, a junior majoring in nutrition, have spent the past year working with the rest of the club to organize, facilitate and fundraise for the event. 

“The event itself has actually only been going on for three years because most people stop (jumping) after high school, but there has been a surge of people coming to college to start teams now,” Mancuso said. 

The American Jump Rope Federation-sanctioned weekend, for which 25 universities and 13 teams are registered, will include a mixture of workshops, discussions and competitive sessions, Mancuso said.

The weekend will even include a showcase, featuring some collaborative work among the teams and individual segments. It will take place on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in the Great Hall and is open to community members, Mancuso said. 

“I think it will be a great time to learn from so many different people, whether that is learning different jump rope skills, coming together to talk about how we can make collegiate level jump rope better as a whole and just to see the collaboration all come together. It’s a big event that we have been planning for a while,” said Alex Davis-Isaac, a senior public relations major. 

Participants will compete in sessions focused on speed and power, as well as one freestyle session. This weekend, 17 Carolina Jump Rope Club members will compete, Mancuso said. 

Mancuso said the club has been preparing for the competitive portion of the weekend since last semester by practicing twice a week, conditioning and perfecting everyone’s freestyle. 

There will be three judges for speed in each station, all of which have been trained through nationally recognized jump rope associations before the weekend, he said. 

“Last year we did really well,” Mancuso said. “We won a majority of the events. It was a lot smaller, though. This year it has almost over doubled in size and there are a lot of good competitors coming, so it will be a lot more difficult. But I would say we could pull off a couple of first places for sure.” 

The team, in general, is hoping to encourage other jump ropers to start clubs on their own college campuses to unify students who want to continue jumping after high school and, eventually, get recognized as a competitive sport in the Olympics, Mancuso said. 

The Carolina Jump Rope Club was founded in 2017 by Mancuso and Booth. Mancuso, who has been competing most of his life, said he and Booth noticed lots of students stopped jumping after high school because there was no formal team at the University. 

The club currently has 30 members and includes undergraduates, graduates and medical and law school students. They compete throughout the year. The club also performs at various events on campus and around the community.

The club is working to get non-profit status for their program called "Jump Ahead," where Carolina Jump Rope Club partners with a couple of local schools and combine jump rope with nutrition education and after-school programs to improve physical and mental health, Mancuso said. The organization has received the Robert E. Bryan Fellowship and been awarded the Kenan Biddle Partnership grant to fund the project. 

“I think my favorite part of Carolina Jump Rope is the opportunities that it gives you,” Davis-Isaac said. “You get to meet other people who are equally invested in the sport and really care about it.”

Mancuso said winning the Championship would not be taken quite as seriously for the University as winning the men’s basketball National Championship would be, but it would still be a fun opportunity for students interested in the sport of jump rope. 

And that’s the goal. "It is more about making sure that everyone has a fun time, and as long as you have fun, we really don’t care how we place," said Carly Brockman, a first-year majoring in advertising and public relations.

Mancuso did bring up an interesting suggestion for the basketball team, though. 

“They always play “Jump Around” in the beginning of all the basketball games, so why not jump around with a jump rope?”

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