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Student Jumps For Success
April 21, 2010
SHSU Media Contact: Linda Borja
The hit MTV show America’s Best Dance Crew featured a jump rope group named Saltare in season five, who went on to sweep the nation with their high stunt jump rope moves and put jump rope on the map.
Sam Houston State University has its own jump rope star, senior business management major Nick Woodard from Houston, who competed against and personally knows several members of Saltare.
Like Saltare, Woodard has accomplished many goals and continues to actively spread jump roping awareness across the nation and world.
“It was just something I wanted to do to have fun, but obviously I am still doing it and loving every minute of it,” said Woodard.
Woodard has been jump roping for 16 years now, traveling the world to such places as Germany, Cyprus, British Virgin Islands, Guam, Canada and Brazil.
He is a four-time USA Jump Rope Grand National Champion, a 2006 World Champion, and master of the Kamikaze Frog trick. Other achievements Woodard has accomplished include being a part of the USA All-Star Team, coordinator of jump rope workshops, camps and exhibitions in 40 states and 20 countries, captain of the jump rope division for the Houston Rockets Launch Crew, and business partner of the jump roping consulting group Jumping Sports Industries.
Even with all his success, occasionally he has encountered problems in his time with jump rope. The most difficult challenge for Woodard was holding practices for the 2006 World Championship competition.
“My team had practices one time over a four month span in North Carolina and the rest of our practices were over the phone trying to figure out sequences that we could do for certain routines,” said Woodard.
That same year he also overcame the obstacle of conquering never-done-before tricks. It took him about two years to master the Kamikaze Frog. He said it was an off and on process to practice the trick. Once he hit it for the first time, no one had a camera to record the event. He later performed the trick a year later and had it posted on YouTube.
Woodard has also been featured in Sports Illustrated, ESPN, the Houston Chronicle, several television stations in Houston, and the Ellen Degeneres Show.
“Jump roping has helped me tremendously in my life. It has made me see many different things as far as how to perceive different people and obstacles you come across,” said Woodard.
He currently is in the process of coordinating jump roping classes at the gym where he works and said he hopes to one day open his own jump roping gym in Houston.
According to Woodard, there are only three jump rope gyms in the nation, two in North Carolina and one in New York, and he plans to focus more on his goal of owning his personal gym after graduation in May.
He also strives for Jumping Sports Industries to be the leading jump rope consulting group in the next four-to-five years.
His ultimate goal which he shares with his fellow ropers is to get jump roping into the Olympics. According to Woodard, there is a long process that occurs in order to get a sport into the Olympics.
“By the time it will be accepted into the Olympics I probably won’t be jump roping anymore, but I would like to know that I helped get it there,” he said.
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