By Joel Langton
The 830 Times
Brooklyn Fletcher may not have had much to say about his trip to Iowa, but his performance at the AAU Junior Olympic Games spoke for him.
The Del Rio athlete finished second in the nation in the triple jump at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, earning a silver medal and All-American honors for his top-eight national finish. The meet was held August 1-7.
He was competing with Code Blue, a local faith-based track club that is run by Bryan and Chelsea Whipkey that compete across the region April through July.
Fletcher was one of three Code Blue Spartans athletes from Del Rio to earn All-American honors at the national meet. Javier Dominguez placed seventh nationally in the long jump with a leap of 5.41 meters, about 17 feet, 9 inches, while 7-year-old Jake Whipkey finished fifth in the 8-and-under 1,500 meters with a time of 5:33.52.
“I was excited,” Fletcher said simply of earning the honor. The eighth-grader is known as a young man who won’t talk your ear off. He lets his work and results do the talking.
Getting there required months of work with Code Blue coach Jaylan Miller, who said Fletcher trained throughout the week and spent Saturdays specifically working on his jumps.
“He always gave 110 percent, and I think once he saw his own potential, he fully leaned into it,” Miller said. “He trusted the process, and it paid off.”
Fletcher’s breakthrough came during the qualifying season, when he won the triple jump at the regional meet and also qualified for nationals in the long jump.
By the time Fletcher reached Iowa, Miller said he had approached the 40-foot mark in the triple jump and entered nationals as the No. 1 seed.
Although Fletcher didn’t match his best jump of the season at nationals, Miller said his athlete did what he needed to do against some of the best young competitors in the country.
“He actually didn’t do anything wrong. The other kid just had a better day than him,” Miller said.
The runner-up finish represented a dramatic step forward from Fletcher’s first trip to nationals as a jumper a year earlier, when Miller said the young athlete struggled under the pressure of competing on the national stage. His first trip was as a sprinter in 2021 as part of a relay team..
“For me to sit back and say, ‘Man, we should have got first,’ would be selfish,” Miller said. “This is his moment. It was his time to shine, and he shined — second in the nation is a huge deal.”
For a quiet young athlete who credits hard work and listening to his coach for his success, second in the nation said plenty.
