Jackie Joyner-Kersee is one of the best American female athletes ever

Editor’s Note: The Sentinel sports staff is putting together a summer series looking at the legacies of the most influential African-American athletes in history. Today: Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

The first lady of track and field.

It’s the nickname that Jackie Joyner-Kersee was given after becoming the best female heptathlete in the world.

Her mother, Mary Joyner, named her Jacqueline after Jaqueline Kennedy Onasis, John F. Kennedy’s wife. She hoped that one-day Joyner-Kersee would be the “first lady” of something.

Little did her mother know that Joyner-Kersee would grow up to be one of the best female athletes in the US — always living up to her name.

Joyner-Kersee began her career in athletics at a young age. Growing up in East St. Louis, her mother encouraged her to stay away from drugs, which were prevalent in her community. She chose basketball, volleyball and track. In high school, Joyner-Kersee cemented her legendary title early.

She won the National Junior Pentathlon championships four years in a row, and set the Illinois high school long jump record for women — 6.68 meters.

After high school, she attended UCLA on a full scholarship, playing basketball and running track. In basketball, she was a four-year starter. In track, she originally focused on the long-jump, until 1981, when she switched focus to the heptathlon.

She was coached by assistant track coach Bob Kersee, whom she later married. By the time she graduated from UCLA in 1985, she had already won a silver medal in the 1984 Olympics.

Joyner-Kersee competed on a nearly-torn hamstring to win the silver in 1984 at the Los Angeles Olympics. She only missed gold by five points.

From then on, she committed herself to training harder for the heptathlon. Then, on July 7, 1986, she set a world record. Breaking 7,000 in the heptathlon at the Goodwill Games in Moscow, she bested the old record by 202 points. She later beat her own record four times, and still holds the world record today at 7,291 points.

She competed in three more Olympic games — 1988 in Seoul, 1992 in Barcelona, and 1996 in Atlanta.

In 1988, she won the gold in the heptathlon. She also became the first American woman to win gold in the long jump. At the Barcelona games, in 1992, she took gold again, becoming the first athlete to win the heptathlon in consecutive games.

Her career came to an end in 1996. In the Atlanta games, she competed in the long jump, before being pulled from the heptathlon by her husband/coach due to a hamstring injury.

After the Atlanta games, Joyner-Kersee decided to try her hand at professional basketball. She joined the Richmond Rage, formerly of the now-defunct American Basketball League, but left halfway through her first season to compete in the indoor long jump competition.

Coming out of retirement, she tried for the Olympics again in 2000, but failed to make Team USA in the Olympic trials. She retired for good in the following year, 2001.

Post-athletic career, Joyner-Kersee turned to philanthropy and activism. She created the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Youth Center Foundation to encourage underprivileged youth to play sports in her hometown, East St. Louis. Later, she co-founded Athletes for Hope, to help athletes contribute to their communities.

“Once I leave this earth, I know I’ve done something that will continue to help others,” she said.

She was later inducted into the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame in 2004. She was awarded with the Jesse Owens Award in 1986 and was named the greatest female athlete of the 20th century by Sports Illustrated for Women.

Joyner-Kersee is an all-around athlete, and embodies every sense of the word. But her success didn’t come without hardship.

At age 11, Joyner-Kersee saw a man gunned down outside her house in East St. Louis, a poverty-stricken city. Years later, her grandfather got drunk and shot her grandmother to death, only a day after Joyner-Kersee had spoken to her grandmother on the phone.

Her mother, Mary, died when she was only 18, a freshman in college at UCLA. Mary had a rare form of meningitis that left her in a coma she could never wake up from.

Joyner-Kersee also sufferers from chronic asthma, a diagnosis she refuted for a long time. She kept the disease from her coaches because she didn’t believe she could be successful with it. As she educated herself about it, she began to take medication and use preventative measures. Now, she’s an advocate for athletes with asthma.

“You must see yourself through the challenges you're faced with and know that something better is going to come out of this,” she said.

Joyner-Kersee’s life has never been easy. But she attributes her success to the determination she has. Her persistence was formed at a young age.

“The glory of sport comes from dedication, determination, and desire,” Joyner-Kersee said.

She proved to the world that you don’t have to come from a rich, prominent background to succeed in sports, or life. She dominated in track and field, while still advocating for marginalized youth in her community. She’s used her platform for good.

While she no longer runs, or jumps professionally, she’s made strides for athletes across the world.