Jessica Ennis - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Born in Sheffield, Ennis is one of two daughters of Vinnie Ennis and Alison Powell, and has a younger sister named Carmel. Her father, originally from Jamaica, is a self-employed painter and decorator; her mother, a social worker, was born in Derbyshire. Neither of her parents was particularly athletic, but her father did some sprinting at school whilst her mother favoured the high jump. They introduced her to athletics by taking her to a 'Start:Track' event at Sheffield's Don Valley Stadium during the 1996 school summer holidays. In later years she joked that her parents took her to the event because "I think my mum and dad wanted me out of the house!" She won her first athletics prize there – a pair of trainers. More importantly, it was there that she met the man who was to become her coach, Toni Minichiello. She took to the sport immediately and joined the City of Sheffield Athletic Club the following year, aged eleven. In November 2000, aged fourteen, she won the Sheffield Federation for School Sports Whitham Award for the best performance by a Sheffield athlete at the National Schools Championships, where she won the high jump competition.

Growing up in the Highfield area of Sheffield, Ennis attended Sharrow Primary School and King Ecgbert School in Dore, where she did her GCSEs and stayed on in the sixth form to gain three A-Levels, before going on to study psychology at the University of Sheffield and graduating in 2007 with a 2:2.