National High School Records Through the Years

Girls Outdoor Record – Long Jump

Kathy McMillan (Hoke County HS, Raeford, North Carolina)

Performance – 21-7½ 

Date – April 12, 1976

Place – Raeford, North Carolina

Meet – High school triangular

Previous Records – Her own of 21-7 ¼, in Prague, Czechoslovakia, July 8, 1975

Kathy McMillan grew up in Raeford, North Carolina, a farming town of 4,500 and the county seat of Hoke County. Her father, Alexander McMillan, grew tobacco and was a brick mason. She had seven brothers and sisters. “I was just a country girl,” she said. “I used to like to jump over a little brook in the woods, and I was the only one who could get across.”

Official track for high school girls had just begun in the state, and she took advantage. In 1975, her junior year, she won the state meet with an excellent jump of 20-2 ½. She also did well at AAU Nationals so was selected for the national team that went to Europe for a summer series of international dual meets. In the meet in Kiev July 5, 1975, the national high school long jump record was set not by McMillan but her rival at the time, Sherron Walker, of Everett, Washington, who jumped 21-3 ¼, becoming the first high school girl to jump beyond 21 feet. Three days later, in a meet in Prague against Poland and Czechoslovakia, McMillan broke her first record, defeating Walker, jumping 21-7 ¼. Nine months later, her senior high school season under way, on April 12, 1976, 49 years ago this week, McMillan competed in a small triangular meet on her home track in Raeford, where she jumped 21-7 ½, breaking her own record by a quarter of an inch and equaling the American record at the time, held by Martha Watson of California.

Kathy was not done, as 1976 was an Olympic year. She made the U.S. team, jumped 22-3, went to Montreal and won the Olympic silver medal. To this day, half a century later, McMillan is the third-longest jumper in high school annals.      

National High School Records Through the Years appears once a week, compiled and written by a track historian, Jack Pfeifer (Lake Oswego, Oregon). Inquiries may be directed to him by email ([email protected]).