Savionna Glover Beaufort’s Next Olympic Hopeful

story by jeff whitten

photography by paul nurnberg

The list of things Beaufort High School track and field star Savionna Glover wants to get done before she is done is as straightforward as a race down 100 meters of track.

1. Turn pro in the middle of her college career. 2. Meet three-time Olympic gold medalist Allyson Felix. 3. Make it to the 2020 Olympic trials. 4. Win a gold medal in the 2020 Olympic games in Tokyo.

Those are lofty ambitions, but for Glover, a rising senior, the question may not be whether she competes in the Olympics, but instead in what event. Long jump? Triple jump? What about her favorite, event, the 100-meter dash?

Glover, who holds Beaufort High’s long jump record with a jump of 18-feet, 3 inches, already has four state AAA individual titles in South Carolina High School League competition, having won back-to-back long jump and triple jump titles as both a sophomore and junior. In May, she ran the first leg in the Eagles’ title-winning 4×100 relay team as well, while also placing second behind Berea’s Kennedy Dennis in the 100-meter dash, to pick up a fifth medal.

Those accomplishments haven’t gone unnoticed. Glover, a standout on a BHS team of standouts, was the 2014-2015 High School Sports Report’s AAA girls’ track athlete of the year. She’s won All District 8 honors, All State honors and is widely considered one of the area’s top track athletes. This summer, Glover and teammate Adrienne Brown went to Australia to compete in the Down Under Games. Glover won two golds and a silver, and Brown got a gold. Then they got to go Hawaii. More on that later.

Because before attending college and turning pro and the Olympics, Glover still has another year of high school to go. She is in one of South Carolina’s top programs under one of the South’s top track coaches, 10-time state champ coach Herbert Glaze, whom Glover started running for back in middle school after she finished her eighth grade season at Lady’s Island Middle School. That’s where she started running, as a seventh grader when a gym teacher told Glover to think about track because she was “pretty fast.”

“I decided to try out for the team and ended up making it,” Glover said. “I’ve been competing ever since.”

Has she ever, though it’s not all about “being pretty fast.” Glover is an honor roll kid with a 4.2 GPA and a fondness for science and food nutrition classes. “I’m more of a hands on learner, I learn things faster that way,” she said. She dedicates anywhere from 15-20 hours a week to her sport, whether it’s in-season or not. And while she favors the 100 because it requires both speed and technique, and a good start, it’s the sheer multiplicity of demands placed on jumpers that makes those who do it well so uncommon.

“What makes a good jumper? You have to have coordination, strength, speed,” Glover said. “You have to stay in the weight room and working on the track, like running the 400 will make your 100 time faster, it also helps you with your jump.”

That’s just in the long jump. There’s also the triple jump, an odd event which is as much about knowing how to stride, or pace, as it is about athleticism and coordination and strength and speed. Suffice it for now to say that Glover is the state’s best in her division, though it was in the long jump where she had her most exhilarating performance to date.

It was at the state meet at Spring Valley High School in Columbia. Glover had struggled with the long jump all spring.

“My season was off the whole year. it was probably my weakest event, and before my last jump I was in third place,” Glover said. “So it was like ‘I’ve got to do this now, right now.’”

She did do it, right then. Glover jumped 18 feet, 1.25 inches. That’s not her best or a school record, but it was good enough on that day, and Glover’s goal is to continue to improve. She wants to own the school record in the triple jump just like she has the long jump record, and she’s got friend Tatianna Fripp to help push her as she works on getting faster.

There’s room for that. Glover’s time of 12.20 in the 100 meters at the state finals this spring is less than a second slower than the 11.32 second qualifying standard for the Olympic trials. Her best in the long jump is about three inches shy of the 21.235 feet standard, and her triple jump is also a few inches short of the distance required to get to the Olympic trials.

But Glover has time. She’ll go somewhere to college – very likely on scholarship – and wants to study sports medicine. In her downtime, Glover likes scary movies and pizza and making modern dance videos with friends – perhaps in part because as a child she told her mother she’d be seeing her on TV in the Olympics. Give her any car to drive and she’d pick a black Range Rover, and she loves to cook in the kitchen as well as on the track.

But the Olympics, that’s the thing. It’s No. 4 on Glover’s list of things to get done before she’s done. Maybe here then is a good place to share Glover’s advice to youngsters entering high school, where she’ll be a senior this fall:  “Whatever you want to do, you can accomplish it, don’t let people tell you that you can’t. Try your hardest, stay focused and you’ll get there.”

Which brings us back to Hawaii, where Glover spent three days earlier this July learning some culture and enjoying the sun. It was on her list of things to get done before she’s done. “No. 5, Go back to Hawaii,” she said.

You know, that could happen in 2020, right after the Olympics. Find the right flight, and Hawaii is a little over halfway between Beaufort and Tokyo.