Jessica Chapman - Intro

Hello, my name is Jessica Chapman. I was born right here in Springfield, Missouri.  Shortly after the 15^th of September in 1993, I was whisked away to a small little farm town called Mtn. Grove. I spent my entire childhood helping my grandmother in the garden, riding horses with my friends, and running 5ks with my mom. When it came time for me to be starting high school my parents moved me and my three younger siblings to Republic.  I’ve always been fascinated with learning new things and pushing to find my limits in everything I do.

Ever since I was able, running was my passion. It’s one that, as I mentioned before, I share with my mother. At 45 years of age she was still able to outrun me in my prime. At 15 I was able to run a five and a half minute mile. Quite an accomplishment for a 15 year old girl. My mom was never hard on me or pushed me to run when I was unwilling, but she always encouraged me to give it my all. I’ve competed in over fifty 5ks, 3.1 mile races for those who don’t know, a handful of 10ks and one half marathon. I ran track and cross country in high school and excelled. My freshman year in track was by far my best. I competed in the 100m hurdles, 300m hurdles, the 4x200m relay, and the 4x400m relay and was training to run my first marathon. So I’m sure you are probably thinking, “wow this girl really likes to gloat...”, well…it’s all leading to a point. My senior year, 2 weeks into cross country season, I all of a sudden woke up one morning at 4:45 a.m. ready to go to practice before school, and I was practically unable to move my right leg and had an immense amount of pain in both hips. My dad took off work that day and took me to the emergency room completely unknowing as to what could have happened. After numerous different specialists and an even more amount of tests, they had concluded that I had Anterior Superior Iliac Spine Apophasis’s. The muscles in my hips had started to tear away from the bone and fluid was building in my hip sockets. Needless to say I wasn’t able to run anymore. I spent the next 2 weeks and a wheelchair and the 10 after that on crutches trying to prevent movement so I could heal.  I went through months of physical therapy and was told after the fact that my injury had resulted from running at such an intense level while I was young, preventing my growth plates from forming the way they should have.  I run every now and again but to this day my hips still cause me minor pain. The life lesson I got out of this was that even if you give something your all and work every spare second for something you want, the outcome may not be what you had in mind.  If this hadn’t happened to me I would have been going to college somewhere else instead of here really close to all of my family and my boyfriend of over 2 years, Cruz.

There wasn’t much to my teenage years except for sports and school. I graduated in 2012 and this is my first semester of college. I took the first semester off to work and save up some money. Currently employed at Arby’s off of Republic road and Pizza Hut in Republic, I am here to complete the Associate of Arts transfer degree so I can transfer to MSU to major in Sports Medicine.

My younger siblings and I with my step-brothers at my mother Donna and current husband Jims wedding in July of 2011

                       My father Keith and step-mom Sheri