Since learning she would be going to the Paris Games in trampoline, Howard County native Jessica Stevens has found herself waking up in the middle of the night in disbelief.
“It’s still one of those things when I wake up in the middle of the night and I have to turn and look at my phone,” Stevens said on Glenn Clark Radio July 16. “Like, is it real? Is it not just some crazy dream?”
Stevens earned a bronze medal at the world championships in November, ending a 49-year dry spell for Americans medaling in the event. She competed at the world championships five times previously from 2017 to 2022 but finished in the top 10 just once. She placed third in November with a score of 55.74.
On June 26, the Centennial graduate and current University of Maryland student was officially named to the Olympic team for the first time. Stevens earned her spot after recording the highest combined score by an American in two of three Olympic qualifiers this season.
Stevens won’t be the only Centennial alum to go to Paris this summer. Aaron Russell, a 31-year-old from Ellicott City, will compete in volleyball for the second time, his first coming in 2016. Stevens credited her high school for helping her get to this point.
“Everybody at Centennial supported me along this journey,” Stevens said. “There’s no way I would be where I am right now without all [that] support.”
The 24-year-old has a lengthy resume in trampoline. Stevens began competing when she was 8 years old after initially transitioning from gymnastics. The Ellicott City native fell in love with it right away.
As the child of an Olympic skydiving mother and diving father, Stevens credits her parents for helping her learn how to compete in a bit of a “crazy sport,” joking that it must be a genetic trait. A self-described “adrenaline junkie,” Stevens takes joy in flipping her body around as she jumps up off the trampoline.
“You’ve got to be a little bit brave to do trampoline because you are flipping your body around,” she admitted.
The dimensions of an Olympic-sized trampoline are 17 feet by 10 feet. Competitions are graded based on difficulty, execution and time of flight.
In 2014, Stevens won her first international event in Daytona Beach, Fla., in synchronized trampoline. It was a huge moment in her development and sparked her belief that she could compete in the sport on a world stage.
“That’s what kind of started the hook of me falling in love with competing internationally,” Stevens said.
Stevens has since gone on to compete in dozens of national and international competitions. She won an individual gold medal at the 2023 Pan American Games and an individual silver at the 2023 Pan American Championships.
Now, she hopes to give the U.S. its best-ever Olympic finish in trampoline, with the country’s previous highest placement being sixth. Trampoline didn’t make its Olympic debut until 2000.
“Just trying to take it one day at a time I think is my current strategy,” Stevens said. “Trust my training … and just enjoy it. Obviously I’m going to do the best I can, but there’s so many memories to be made and I just want to experience being there.”
To hear more from Stevens, listen to the full interview here: