Courtesy of SouthJerseyLocalNews.com

by Gary McPherson
for the Progress

Nine-year-old Jordan Jarvis is spending her summer getting ready for the fourth grade. She likes to play basketball and goes swimming most every day.

She is also a champion motorcross racer and next month Jordan will be in Tennessee for the 29th annual AMA Amateur National Motorcross Championship.

Jordan spent the last four months qualifying for the prestigious event. More than 20,000 tried out, but only the top finishers in the regionals earned the right to attend.

Held at the Loretta Lynn Ranch in Hurricane Mills, Tenn., the competition brings together the best amateur racers from around the country.

Jordan qualified for the 50cc 7- to 8-year-old Stock class, becoming the first girl ever to do so.

“When we found out she made it to Loretta’s, she screamed, I cried and Rich (Jordan’s father) was beaming,” said Jordan’s mother, Kathi. “We could not be more proud of our little peanut and all of her accomplishments.”

Jordan began riding when she was just 5 years old, her mom said.

Dad, Rich Jarvis, raced professionally from 1992 to 2001 and said that one day in 2006, he agreed to let his youngest daughter give it a shot.

“She took right to it and, after the first year, she really showed a lot of talent for it. She started competing less than a year into riding,” he said. “By her second year of competitions, she won just about everything.”

Jordan hasn’t slowed down since, travelling up and down the east coast with her family, taking part in races from Florida to West Virginia.

Last year, Jordan was injured in a crash on a track in Hanover, Pa. She got back on her bike and finished the race, only to find out afterward that she had lacerated her spleen.

Doctor’s ordered her not to ride for the next three months, but, by December, she got back on that bike, literally and figuratively.

The injury behind her, Jordan is now preparing to perform on the biggest stage of her young career.

“I’m really looking forward to riding with the fastest kids and just having some fun,” said Jordan of the upcoming race. “I like beating the boys.”

There is a girls class at the big event, but racers can’t enter that until they reach 12 years of age, leaving Jordan to compete against the boys for at least a couple more years.

“She is a very outgoing, caring and active little girl, there isn’t a track on the East Coast that we go to that she isn’t known,” Kathi Jarvis said.

“She never was the Barbie doll type. We have gotten comments from some of the parents of the friends she races with that their boys think she is cool because she likes to make tracks and play with toy dirt bikes in the dirt,” she said.

Jordan may not be a fan of dolls, but she is a fan of trophies. And when she returns to Maude Wilkins Elementary in the fall, she hopes to have one more big one on her mantle.

[News & Picture Source]