Hanover
Rothwell, a Dartmouth College freshman sprinter and jumper, owns three Big Green records after only five meets. She’s won nine of 11 events overall and was runner-up in the other two. And she’s 10-for-10 in first-place scoring opportunities, one of her runner-up finishes coming in the nonscoring season opener at Boston University and the other against a club runner in the 60-meter dash at Dartmouth Relays, where she was still awarded 10 points as the first collegiate finisher.
After setting Dartmouth’s indoor 60-meter high hurdles record in 8.56 seconds in her home debut in December against New Hampshire and Maine, Rothwell set an overall program mark in the long jump at Dartmouth Relays with a lunge of 19 feet, 6.25 inches. The latter came even though she began to compete in the event in earnest only last year while a senior at Durham (N.C.) Academy.
A week later, Rothwell lowered her 60 hurdles record to 8.46 during a home meet, then extended the long jump mark to 19-9 while setting a Big Green indoor 60 dash mark (7.45) and winning the 60 hurdles again on Jan. 20 at Columbia.
Competing against the host Lions and Yale in New York at The Armory — site of the upcoming Heptagonal Championships — Rothwell pulled off the trifecta despite battling early strep throat symptoms.
“I woke up with a sore throat, and I was hoping that’s all that it was,” Rothwell said during a recent Big Green practice at Leverone Field House. “I didn’t really get the full (strep throat) symptoms until the next day, but it was still a little tough because the events were back-to-back-to-back, all in a row. I was pretty satisfied with the way things turned out.”
Rothwell is no stranger to program records; she owns five at Durham, where her coach was former Dartmouth distance runner Dennis Cullen. Rothwell was a five-time individual North Carolina state high school champion despite missing her junior season because of an ankle injury sustained playing basketball at Durham Academy. Rothwell also was a 1,000-point scorer on the hardwood.
“I’ve been running (competitively) at some level since I was 6 and always loved it,” said Rothwell, whose childhood home was just a few miles from Duke University. “I loved basketball and played a little volleyball, too, but my main focus has always been track.”
And she’s always been difficult to stop.
Utilizing a natural burst to succeed at sprints since a young age, she shied away from hurdles until age 11 or 12. The hurdles didn’t do much to hinder Rothwell, who went on to win three such events at the USATF Junior Olympics from 2012-16.
Donald Davis, Rothwell’s coach with the Durham Striders club team, enjoyed watching her overcome her fear of the hurdles.
“Nobody likes to fall, and that’s basically the reason she and her mom (Mia) wanted her to stay away (from hurdles),” Davis said. “Once she started them, she sailed right over them. She picked right up on the techniques and applied them right away. She’s always been a quick learner.”
That’s proven the case with the long jump, an event Rothwell began last season after years as a high jumper. She lunged 19-5 last spring to break Durham’s previous long jump record by more than 2 feet, according to Cullen.
Dartmouth jumps coach Tim Wunderlich has found Rothwell receptive to continuing her long jump progress.
“Cha’Mia is a special kind of athlete that you just don’t get very often,” said Wunderlich, a former Big Green decathlete. “Her speed helps her a lot on the runway, which is about 90 percent of the long jump. Anything I ask her to do (to help her execution) she incorporates very quickly. She’s very eager to win and to learn.”
Rothwell never seems to stop pushing herself. Even after qualifying for the Junior Olympic Nationals in the high jump a few years back, she tried to elude Davis’ insistence that she cease competing for the day because of an injury.
“She had a bum ankle, and I said, ‘That’s it, you’ve qualified, you’re done,’ ” Davis recalled. “She hid behind the mat and tried to sneak back out and keep trying to raise the bar. That’s how much drive she has.”
Even bringing such competitive flare, Rothwell equally values being a teammate. Both Cullen and Dartmouth head coach Sandy Ford-Centonze used “bubbly” to describe her interactions at practice.
“She’s already become one of our leaders, both vocally and leading by example, and she’s a lot of fun,” Ford-Centonze said. “She’s very welcoming, very inclusive and embraces the idea of team as family.”
That began at Durham, where Rothwell fostered a sense of teamwork even while competing at a higher level than most.
“She’s extremely gregarious, enthusiastic from the moment she walked in in ninth grade,” Cullen said. “Durham Academy is not a track powerhouse, and she could have easily secluded herself from the other kids on the team. Instead, she acted like a big sister to both the boys and girls on the team.”
One of those teammates, Dartmouth sophomore distance runner Eliza Dekker, also ran with Rothwell at Durham Academy and for the Striders.
“We’ve always had different events, but she’s someone you definitely want to have on your team,” said Dekker, a three-time North Carolina state cross country high school champion. “She’s someone who’s easy to be successful with.”
Jared Pendak can be reached at jpendak@vnews.com or 603-727-3225.