Editor’s note: This is the third in a five-part series that features female athletes at Iowa State.

Her stretches and warm-ups finished, ISU high jumper Gina Curtis gazes at the bar, set 5’4-1/4″ above Lied Recreation Center’s turf.

Curtis takes six strides, jumps off her right foot and clears the bar by three inches.

Curtis came to Iowa State from the basketball courts and 400-meter tracks of Brooklyn Parks, “Minnesohta,” as she calls it.

As a senior on Parks Center Senior High’s basketball team, she tore her left anterior cruciate ligament.

She called assistant womens track coach Ron McEachron and asked “Do you still want to recruit me?”

McEachron did and for good reason. The previous spring Curtis won the state long jump and high jump title – the latter being the second time she had done so.

Curtis came to Iowa State and redshirted her freshman year.

In January of 1999, in Curtis’ redshirt freshman season (sophomore year academically), a second tear of the left ACL, this one partial, was repaired.

In March, at the first meet of the outdoor track season, she tore her left ACL again, this time completly.

In January of 2000, as a red-shirt sophomore, screws inside her left knee were removed.

“These are my scars,” Curtis says minutes before clearing her first jump, pointing to the pink lines running through and above her kneecap.

The scars can’t be seen from 10 feet away as she prepares for her second jump on Tuesday in the Rec.

Curtis staggers her feet, her right in the lead.

She leans back on her left like she’s passing under a limbo bar, and then it is an ever-increasing blur of legs, stopped only by the leap off the right foot, which clears 5′ 6″ with ease.

Curtis jumped off her left foot until two years ago.

The four surgeries shook her confidence, McEachron said, and weakened her leg.

So he told Curtis, “Let’s try it from this side,” meaning facing and approaching the bar from the left side, jumping off the right.

McEachron knows of one jumper who was able to switch jumping legs, and as Curtis says, “He was ambidextrous.”

“You right handed?” McEachron says. “Throw left handed.” That’s how hard it should have been for Curtis.

Her first day jumping off her right leg in the weeks following the screw removal, Curtis cleared 5′ 4″.

On Feb. 24 of this year at the Big 12 Indoor Track and Field Championships, Curtis won the women’s high jump with a 5′ 10 3/4″ leap.

On March 9 at the NCAA Indoor Championships, Curtis jumped 6′ 0″, a personal as well as ISU indoor record.

She finished sixth, enough to make her an All-American. “My parents don’t get to see me jump much,” Curtis says.

But they were at the Indoors.

When Curtis’s mother grew up, only volleyball and cheerleading were available to her.

“I had very little obstacles,” Curtis says.

But her mother’s generations did. So when Curtis recently spoke at a banquet honoring female athletes from Iowa State in the late `60s and early `70s, it was another blow to the stereotypes still pervasive across America about female athletes.

“I think women’s athletics as a whole still has stereotypes attached. But it is a very ignorant point of view,” she says.

Curtis bounced slightly on her feet before her fourth jump.

Nine people watched the lean, then the blur, then the leap.

Curtis cleared 5′ 8 1/2″ again without hassle. “She’s just burying it,” someone behind her said.

Joey Brunkhorst, a male high jumper, clapped.

Curtis’s first high jump was in eighth grade gym class.

She cleared 5′ 0″, beating everyone in her class. Maybe I should try this, she thought.

Looking at a tape of her in high school, McEachron noticed she had bad form, yet Curtis jumped high. So he recruited her.

Curtis has a tough time finding shorter high jumpers. She’s 5′ 9″. The height can be intimdating, but “it’s more about speed and technique,” she says.

No more bad form.

The bar moves to 5′ 10″, a half inch shorter than the record before Curtis came along.

After her third stride, Curtis lets loose a quick blow of air. She jumps. She hits the bar and it falls with her.

She goes back, bounces on her legs, staggers them, and stares at the bar.

Her legs blur, her right one jumps, her body clears.

Before Curtis, 5′ 10 1/2″ was set while running ten steps before leaping – the extra four strides build more speed.

Curtis used six to clear 5′ 10″.

“I’m pretty darn happy about it,” she says.

And later: “You’re only limited by your own expectations.”