Cal Wide Receiver Trevor Rogers Has Olympic Long Jump Dreams

The two-sport freshman laments that no American qualified for the finals in the event at Paris.

Trevor Rogers /

Once upon a time the United States ruled the men’s long jump at the Olympics.

Jesse Owens won the event while showing up Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Games. Bob Beamon shocked the track and field world with a world record even he could not process at the ’68 Mexico City Games.

And Carl Lewis won the event four times in a row, from 1984 through 1996, adding to America’s current total of 22 gold medals in the long jump.

“And now, nobody,” said Cal freshman wide receiver Trevor Rogers, who won the long jump at the California state meet last spring.

The U.S. was kept off the medal podium at the 2020 Tokyo Games and won’t have anyone in Tuesday’s event final in Paris after being shut out  in qualifying on Sunday.

Greece, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Croatia, and Colombia each will send one athlete to the long jump final. China and Jamaica qualified two each. But no Americans.

“I was mad,” Rogers said after football practice Sunday. “I was hoping my guy from Oakland (would make it).”

Malcolm Clemons, 22, who grew up in Oakland and attended Saint Mary’s College High School in Berkeley, finished 11th in his preliminary group with a best of 25 feet, 4 inches (7.72 meters) and was ousted. Clemons attends Florida, where he has jumped 26-11 3/4 indoors.

Two other Americans were in the Paris qualifying round, one of them jumping 25-8 1/4 (7.83) and the other fouling three times.

Rogers is qualified to discuss the long jump because he etablished himself as a promising young talent while at Acalanes High in Lafayette. 

He leaped 24-3 3/4 on his final attempt to win the state title as a senior last spring. “I ended up having one jump at the end to win it,” Rogers recalled. “You could really feel that pressure. When I was running down the runway my whole body felt numb.”

Rogers posted a personal-best of 24-7 3/4 in the state meet prelims, a mark that is just 8 1/2 inches shy of landing him a spot on Cal’s all-time top-10 list.

Rogers, who plans to compete in the event for the Bears next spring, said he dreams about the possibility of someday long jumping on the world’s biggest stage.

“Yeah, always,” he said. “I like to think I can get to that level.”

In addition to being a consensus three-star football prospect at Acalanes, Rogers ran 10.82 for 100 meters as a senior and a wind-aided 21.80 in the 200 while anchoring the Dons’ 4x100 relay team that also qualified for the state meet. He triple jumped 45-1 and high jumped 6-4.

Rogers comes from a Cal family. His father, John, played on a national championship water polo team. His brother played football for the Bears, his sister was on the soccer team and a cousin played volleyball at Cal.

But Rogers is apparently unrelated to Curtis Rogers, who in 1985 set Cal’s still-standing long jump record of 26-6 1/4.