The bond that identical twins share is a real thing – the result of a fertilized egg splitting into two, which gives them identical DNA.
It’s a bond that Fort Campbell High School seniors Jinny and Sunny Joo share in the classroom, in the athletic arena, and in everyday life.
Jinny is the student council senior president, the National Honor Society vice-president, and a member of the school’s robotic team. She has a weighted GPA of 4.13 and is now waiting to hear from the over three dozen colleges and universities she has applied to.
Sunny, like her sister, also has a 4.13 GPA which puts them both in the top five of their senior class.
Jinny is a five-year member of the Fort Campbell swim team and a four-year member of the track and field team. She finished eighth in the pole vault at the state tournament, helping the Lady Falcons to a runner-up finish. Sunny runs cross country and competes on the Fort Campbell archery team.
The sisters were part of Fort Campbell’s swim team that put together the program’s best-ever finish at the region meet a year ago. Sunny had two top-ten individual finishes and Jinny had one. They both teamed to bring home top-six finishes in a pair of relay events.
They are also members of the school’s robotics team, something Sunny had an initial interest in and passed on to her sister.
“I was interested in robotics because I went to the Tennessee Governor’s Scholars Program, which is based on learning more Stem techniques, engineering, and science combined,” Jinny said. “I learned more about collaboration and also working as a team and using Stem in real life.”
The Joo family is a rarity at Fort Campbell — a large family of athletes that have stayed at Fort Campbell for their entire careers that also includes little brother Eugene who swims and plays golf.
“I definitely think living the military life has helped me because once I moved into a brand new middle school, I had no friends,” Jinny said, falling back on the bond she shares with her sister Sunny.
Jinny was born with three holes in her heart, called an atrial septal defect. As a sophomore, she had surgery that kept her off the playing field but not for long.
“I can always rely on my sister. If I have trouble with homework or something and she has the same class, we can all collaborate or work together and stuff like that,” Jinny said. “I think we’ve always had, like, this bond, this natural bond that twins have — a best friend type thing that’s always there for me when I have problems in life, like friends, situations, or relationship advice.”
Once they graduate from Fort Campbell, that bond could likely be put to the test. They both want to attend college but it may not be the same one.
“I think right now we’re trying to look for different paths because I think Sunny wants to be more towards the East Coast. I sort of want to stay in, like, in the mid-East Coast, maybe, like, near Tennessee. And Sunny wants to go to the New York area. So definitely a big change in that. But at the same time, it can’t really affect our relationship,” said Jinny, who wants to double major in biology and become a cardiologist.
Sunny wants to major in psychology, but after that, she isn’t sure.
“I’ll know once I get to college and figure it out,” she said confidently.
For now, there are swimming regionals in a week and the start of the track and field season in six weeks.
And Jinny and Sunny will be in the mix helping Fort Campbell bring home more hardware in their athletic farewell.
