‘I miss him every day.’ Columbus parkour athletes Level Up, honor coach after tragic death
The lessons Jodi Behar, 13, and Jordan Watson, 14, learned from their coach to overcome obstacles and become elite-level athletes in the sport of parkour are helping them handle their most daunting challenge yet: How to persevere after coach dies in a tragic accident.
Chase Connors — the coach who inspired them to feel brave and safe enough to backflip off walls and run on railings, the coach who motivated them to do their best because it’s OK not to be perfect — still guides them despite his death because they remember his life.
So they don’t have to be perfect in grief.
So it’s OK not to be OK.
He coached them to overcome any obstacle, after all.
“Chase was more than my coach; he was like my older brother,” Jodi, a rising eighth-grader at Harris County Carver Middle School, told the Ledger-Enquirer.
“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever been through. I miss him every day and that won’t go away. He’s still with me in everything I do. I can hear him telling me to get my chest up or to jump higher, and he’s still pushing me out of my comfort zone. I hope to continue to make him proud.”
Chase was critically injured in a head-on car crash in Baldwin County during a March 5 afternoon. He was driving from Columbus to Milledgeville to help a friend prepare for a parkour gym opening.
Chase died two days later in a Macon hospital. He was 37.
Four months later, athletes who trained at Chase’s gym, Level Up Parkour Academy, will gather to celebrate his life in a parkour jam July 23 at Heritage Park in downtown Columbus.
In interviews with the L-E, Jodi, Jordan and their mothers, Missy Behar and Sheri Watson, explain Chase’s impact on them and countless others.
What is parkour?
Chase graduated from Harris County High School in 2002 and studied exercise science at Columbus State University. After coaching gymnastics for several years, he became more interested in parkour.
Parkour, derived from the French term for obstacle course, parcours du combatant, is a sport that requires athletes to traverse obstacles by running, climbing or leaping rapidly and efficiently. The objective is to maintain flow, constantly moving from one point to another.
Jodi and Jordan met about six years ago while taking gymnastics lessons. They were attracted to parkour because it emphasizes athletic creativity — getting from point A to point B any way they can, instead of a prescribed routine. It’s not about striving for perfection, but reaching the destination.
Substance over style.
Sheri put it this way: “Whatever is before you, just learn how to safely get past it.”
Jodi’s favorite part of parkour is doing flips.
“I like being in the air,” she said, “feeling like I’m free a little bit — I get some of my stress out.”
Jodi also likes the support she feels from the collaborative environment of parkour.
“The community is a lot more together than other sports,” Jodi said. “They try to help you as much as they can. At every competition I’ve been to, it’s been people cheering you on instead of trying to figure out how they can win.”
Missy and Sheri laughed as they recalled the reaction from other parents while they let their daughters climb on playground equipment in ways it wasn’t designed.
“They weren’t using the park normally,” Missy said.
Missy also recalled a moment at a Chili’s restaurant, where they waited outside for a table. Jodi walked atop a railing, prompting another waiting customer to wonder aloud, “Oh my God. Where’s that child’s mother?”
Missy replied, “I’m right here,” and informed her that Jodi was using the railing the way she was trained.
“She didn’t like that,” Missy said.
The stranger persisted and warned that Jodi could get hurt. Missy countered, “Ma’am, she’s doing what she loves… I have crutches in the back of my car at all times. I can’t stop her from doing what she loves.”
‘I love my life!’
Unmarried and without children, Chase practically lived at Level Up, sleeping on the couch in the lobby, Missy said. He showered at Planet Fitness.
“He had just gotten an apartment like two or three months before he died,” Missy said.
Missy cherishes a video she has from 2016, when Chase spots 7-year-old Jodi backflipping off a wall by herself for the first time and he declares, “I love my life!”
It was clear to those who knew him that his most joyful moments came when he could boost others to their full potential.
“He just was selfless and genuine,” Sheri said.
Chase was kind and a gentleman, Jordan said. Jodi described him as funny, a bubbly personality, uplifting and easy to talk with about anything.
“You need to have a person like that in your life,” Jodi said.
No wonder he named his gym Level Up. The meaning resonates with Jordan in parkour and in life.
“Even though you can’t do this right now,” she said, “it’s just an obstacle, and it can be overcome.”
Sheri is grateful for that message as a mother.
“He always tried to push the kids to the next level of difficulty,” she said. “He had a way of encouraging them to do that, giving them the confidence.”
Building confidence
Parkour has helped Jodi come out of her shell, Missy said.
“She took gymnastics for four years, and the coach didn’t know she could talk,” Missy said. “She was that quiet.”
The confidence Jodi developed through parkour has helped her overcome obstacles figuratively too, Missy said. When she had a problem with another student at school, Jodi spoke to an administrator alone.
Without such a strong sense of herself, Missy said, “she would have had mama do it.”
Chase was known for telling his athletes before they attempted a new skill, “It’s only scary for a second.” Then when they fell, he would say, “You’re OK, right?”
His words affirmed instead of questioned their ability to try again.
“It was like a Jedi mind trick,” Sheri said.
And when they succeeded, Chase would say, “Wow!” or “There you go!” or “There it is!”
Parents trusted Chase with their children because they saw how he interacted with them.
“He never, never got impatient with them,” Sheri said.
“The first time you met him,” Missy said, “you instantly liked him.”
Chase’s death saved other lives
The day after Chase’s crash, dozens of Level Up athletes and supporters gathered at the gym to make get-well cards and posters. They also made a video for Chase.
“When he wakes up, we wanted him to see that we miss him, that we love him, that we’re praying for him,” Sheri said.
He was in a vegetative state. His parents, Toni and Dwayne Connors, and sister Laura Coray, decided to turn off life support, Coray told the L-E. He died that day.
Through organ donations, Chase’s death saved the lives of four strangers. So when Jodi lamented that God didn’t favorably answer their prayers, Missy told her God did favorably answer the prayers of those hoping for a life-changing organ.
Jordan also found comfort knowing. “I was overjoyed to know that Chase is still living on in other people,” she said.
While the gym was closed for a month, Sheri still drove Jordan to the Level Up parking lot the day she was supposed to have her next class.
“We sat outside the door,” Sheri said, “and Jordan just bawled… It’s the hardest thing my daughter’s ever been through.”
But grieving with her friend Jodi has made it easier, Jordan said, “we’ve both leaned on each other.”
To counsel their daughters, the mothers equated grieving with parkouring through a course.
“I just told her we have to keep moving,” Sheri said. “We just can’t lie down and cry. We have to keep going. We have to keep getting up and do the next thing we need to do.”
Missy added, “I asked Jodi, ‘What do you think Chase would want you to do?’”
Return to practice
It was tough for Jordan and Jodi to return to the gym after it reopened. They soothed their souls by sleeping in some of his T-shirts.
Sheri advised Jordan, “You can sit home and do nothing and feel defeated. Or you can go to the gym where Chase was. All his stuff is there. All your memories are there. All the skills he taught you are still there. And you can carry it forward.”
Missy reminded Jodi, “You’re not the only one that lost Chase.”
Jordan and Jodi also have T-shirts with one of Chase’s favorite quotes, attributed to parkour founder David Belle: “There are no limits, only obstacles, and any obstacle can be overcome.”
One of Chase’s friends and fellow parkour coach, Jeremy Odom, succeeded Chase as the new leader of Level Up. It took a while for Jodi and Jordan to warm up to him, Missy said, but she noticed Jodi gave him “the biggest hug before we could leave last night.”
Jordan complimented Jeremy for how he has handled the difficult situation.
“He’s not Chase — no one can ever be Chase — but he’s a great coach,” she said.
After nailing a skill she had been struggling with during a practice with Jeremy, Jordan cried at home because Chase didn’t see it. “Yes he did,” Sheri told her.
“Somebody that’s so influential for so many years for someone at such a young age, it’s just really hard,” Sheri said.
Chase coached Jodi for seven years and Jordan for six years.
“He’s still pushing them,” Missy said. “He may be gone, but he’s still there for them.”
Return to competition
Two weeks after Chase had died and a day after the memorial service in Cascade Hills Church, Jordan and Jodi returned to competition. At the March 20 Spartan race (a military-style obstacle course) at the Georgia International Horse Park in Conyers, they conquered every obstacle. Covered in mud and wearing tank tops emblazoned, “Race for Chase,” his parkour duo crossed the finish line holding hands.
Seeing such perseverance in their daughters, Sheri said, “it was the best thing they could have done after his funeral. We weren’t just sitting at home and crying all day, which we already did for weeks. It was getting out and doing something in memory of him that would make him proud.”
At the Southeast Parkour Championships last month in Greenville, South Carolina, they erased any doubt they could return to their elite performance level. Competing against older athletes in the age 16-and-over women’s division, Jordan and Jodi placed third: Jordan in the speed category and Jodi in the skills category.
Among their supporters in the crowd were Chase’s parents, cheering them on. He was there in spirit, Jodi and Jordan said.
“Competing without Chase by my side was very hard,” Jodi said, “but I know in my heart he would want me to continue to Level Up.”
Jordan added, “I was hearing what I thought he’d be saying... ‘I love my life!’”
IF YOU GO
WHAT: Parkour jam
WHEN: July 23
- 10-11:30 a.m. kids courses for ages 5-8, 9-11 and 12-16
- 11:30 a.m. to noon celebration
- Noon to 1 p.m. jam warmup
- 1 p.m. jam
WHERE: Heritage Park, 700 Front St., Columbus
WHY: To celebrate the life of Chase Connors
More info: Jeremy Odom, 256-339-3606
