Vaulting

I am standing out on the Meridian High School infield next to the pole vault pit. It is a multi-school track meet. The weather is absolutely atrocious. Quite possibly, this is the end of the world as we know it. Roars of thunder, flashes of lightning, sheets of rain followed by hail the size of marbles which are trying to destroy my umbrella, and yet, the track meet goes on.

It is quite comical to watch. Six runners in the 440-yard dash reach the first turn on the track when one racer slips on the slush and takes out two other runners. A girl, in standing water at the discus event, throws two of her four discs into the fence surrounding the launching pad because she lost her grip from the rainwater running off the discus. This is not a track meet, it’s a qualifier for blooper films.

I am here to support one of my high school boys in the pole vault. His name is Brandon. He is one of the outstanding high school aged kids at our church.

Most of the vaulters have already fouled out at nine feet. They are soaked to the bone and shivering. Brandon, who has an average vault height of eleven feet, is still alive. The biggest problem for the vaulters is being able to hold onto their fiberglass pole with wet hands.

A vaulter before Brandon ran down the runway, sank the end of his pole in the box, and got a nice arc on the pole as he began his inverted ride to the crossbar when suddenly, the pole slipped out of both hands. He hit the crash pad upside down on his head. This was scary and yet Brandon and a teammate were allowed to continue.

The bar was raised to ten feet. In the distance, a thunderclap deafened all other noises at the meet. The rain had formed a large puddle on the crash pad. The two remaining vaulters stood at the end on the runway soaked to their bones. They blew on their hands to keep them flexible. One after another they attempted to clear the ten-foot bar, but it was obvious that they couldn’t hold onto the wet poles. At the end, they both scratched out at a height well below what they were capable of.

I looked through the rain at the ten-foot crossbar and tried to envision the bar at fourteen feet, one inch. The day the school record was set at Bellingham High School.

My best friend growing up, Ron Knowlton, also known as “Chuck”, set the pole vault record.

As boys, Chuck and I would explore the woods behind his house. The lot that his house was on bordered the Bellingham Airport property and back in that day, the airport was not surrounded by a cyclone fence. This caused the airport manager much anxiety because he was constantly chasing us off the airport when we trespassed with our bicycles and motorcycles.

This day on our hike through the woods we located a large grove of young alder trees. They stood fifteen feet high and were about five inches at the base. Only Chuck and I could see the potential in these trees.

“I bet that we could each climb a tree to the top and then swing down to the ground,” I suggested. “Sort of a Tarzan thing.”

“Pick a tree. I’ll race you to the top,” Chuck challenged and raced toward a tree.

The limbs of the young alders were not yet strong enough to hold our weight so getting to the top of the trees required more of a shinnying technique. Once at the top, the trees swayed and shook.

“How do you want to do this?” I asked.

“We must get the trees to bend, so try jumping out away from the tree. Hopefully it will bend enough to lower you to the ground,” he said.

“Okay. Here goes!”

I jumped out away from the trunk and sure enough, the trunk bent into an arc and lowered me to the ground.

“It worked!” I shouted up to him. “Give it a try.”

“Bombs away,” he yelled and jumped out away from the tree.

His alder also bent but was reluctant to give him a ride to the ground.

There was a loud, “snap”, followed by a “thud,” followed by a “groan.” Luckily, his fall was broken by leaves and tall grass.

“Come on. Get up off your back and let’s try it again.”

After he got his wind back, we chose two more trees and again climbed to the top.

“You go first this time. Lightning never strikes twice.”

Chuck yelled, “Geronimo!” and jumped out away from the tree. This tree also refused to be obliging and after lowering him five feet, snapped and sent him free falling to his back on the ground below. I, on the other hand, rode my tree nimbly to the ground.

It could have been that in that moment while lying on his back, Chuck had an “aha” moment, or it could have been that he was suffering from a concussion, at any rate from that moment on he decided he wanted to be a pole vaulter.

Returning to Shuksan Middle School he informed Coach Keene that he wanted to learn how to be a pole vaulter. This was exciting to the coach who hadn’t had a pole vaulter on his track team for quite some time. He went to his storeroom, brought out a ten-foot aluminum vaulting pole, and began explaining the theory of vaulting.

Now, Shuksan was not known for its track athletes. Middle school track is a feeder team for high school athletics. Therefore, Shuksan only had aluminum poles, not fiberglass. There was realistically no way that a 90-pound eighth grader was going to get any flex in a pole anyway. There was also no money for an elaborate runway or a crash pit. There was an eight by twelve sand pit with a pole box at one end. The high jumpers and Chuck shared burlap bags filled with foam which they could land in. They were going to start with the basics, trying to clear the six-foot-high crossbar.

I can remember being out with him on the Shuksan field at lunch break. My job was to catch the pole and reset the crossbar after he vaulted, although, as an eighth grader his technique looked more like a pole assisted hurdle than a vault.

The pitfall of my job was that I had to remain alert. Once, Chuck came running down the overgrown grass runway and attempted a vault. When he cleared the crossbar, he flung the aluminum pole backwards so it wouldn’t knock the crossbar down. I, paying more attention to a group of cute girls whom I’m sure were watching me, didn’t see the pole flying back at me. The pole missed my head but bounced hard off my right collar bone which I was sure had been shattered.

“Come on, it’s not broken. Get back up and catch my pole for me. What are the odds of lightning striking twice?”

Chuck competed that year for Shuksan and I’m sure that being the athlete he was, he did well.

The next year, we entered Bellingham High School and Chuck began training under the tutelage of Coach Bob Dorr. It was at BHS that he was given a fiberglass pole. A pole which flexed. For the next four years, Chuck began creating new personal bests at each track meet, slowly moving the crossbar up higher and higher.

It was interesting seeing him drive across town to the Civic Field track meet in his parents’ station wagon. He would have the driver’s window rolled down as he held his pole on the outside of the car. It looked like he was auto jousting.

Every vaulter has a best that they can’t seem to beat. Sometimes it is technique, but sometimes it is a mind game. As I tell Brandon, “Thirteen feet is just a frame of mind. It used to be eight feet, then ten feet, but you cleared them. They are old easy numbers now.”

Chuck’s nemesis his senior year was fourteen feet, the school record.

It was one of the final track meets for the season of 1973. The afternoon at Civic Field was partially sunny. The track was dry and there was only a slight breeze. Coach Dorr was wandering the field talking with his other athletes. The pole vault event was set up directly in front of the stands. In the stands sat Chuck’s mom and dad and all his high school friends.

One by one, the vaulters jumped. They were given three misses per height and then they were done. I imagine that the bar started at eight feet for the underclassmen. Chuck passed on the lower jumps choosing to start at the 11-foot height. He easily cleared it, as he did up to thirteen feet six inches. His competitors had long since fouled out. It was just him against the fourteen-foot-high crossbar.

Coach Dorr walked up behind him. “Come on Ron, it’s just a frame of mind. You’ve got it.”

Chuck ran down the runway, planted the pole in the box, and headed up for the crossbar. His legs cleared the bar, but his shoulder hit it causing the crossbar to flex and bounce to the ground. The fan club moaned. He looked up into the stands as he carried the pole back up the runway. The desperation on his face said that he realized that the mind game was winning.

All the vaulters now stood on the track at the crash pad. No longer competitors, they were there to cheer him on.

“Come on Ron, you can do it!” they chanted.

There wasn’t a sound in the stands as Chuck made his second attempt. There wasn’t a sound until he cleared the bar and crashed onto the pad below. Then the stands became unglued. Chuck had cleared fourteen feet. He now had three more chances to go higher and he finished the day at fourteen feet, one inch. The new school pole vault record.

Ron was able to hold the record for the highest vault at BHS for quite a few years, but as he says, “records are made to be broken.” Upon graduating, he went to Western Washington State College to get a degree in plastics engineering. He continued vaulting for Western’s track team, where he held the school’s vaulting record for many years at a height of fifteen feet, one half inch.

I don’t know if I can take all the credit for his success, but I was the one who got him to swing in the alder trees.

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