I’ve been trying to remember when I learned to pole vault, but I can’t. It’s like when did I learn to tie my own shoes, catch a baseball, or recite the Lord’s Prayer? These things are just some of countless stuff we learn in our childhoods.
My dad was a serious jock. He played old leather-helmet, single-wing football and was a super star in track and field. He won the 1938 Nebraska state high school championship in pole vault using a heavy, old bamboo pole. He also won a college scholarship he and his parents couldn’t afford to accept. I’ve always wondered what he might have accomplished as a college athlete.
Instead, he became my coach and teacher. I must have been seven or eight years old when dad and I erected standards, scrounged the carpet stores for bamboo poles to use as crossbars, meticulously build a regulation box for planting the pole, and spaded up the soil for a slightly softer landing pit. Dad brought home an eight-foot bamboo vaulting pole and I was all set, eager to learn, and anxious to make my father, the old state champion, proud of me.
My dad taught me to sprint down our short back-yard runway carrying my new pole in both hands with the bottom end elevated. As I approach the box, I lower the pole and plant it on a dead run. Now comes the critical part. You must plant the pole as your left foot hits the ground, swing the pole from waist high on your right side to over your head and slide your hands together as your kick hard with my right leg. As you leave the ground you swing around so that you’re upside down and facing the opposite direction as you cross over the crossbar, release the pole, and fall to the ground. Got it?
When you release the pole it generally falls back onto the approach track away from you and all of this crashing to the ground will damage the pole over time, so you need someone to catch your pole. I wore out my mom and dad with pole my catching duties so I introduced a classmate and friend to pole vaulting. He caught on fast and soon became my biggest competitor.
The first formal meet I remember was an elementary school track meet held at the high school’s big track. We competed by grade level and I won my first blue ribbon: Pole Vault, 4th Grade. And so it went through my elementary and junior high years.
We moved to Denver after I completed the 8th grade. I was about to compete with big-city boys. I made the varsity football team as a freshman but didn’t get to play much. I was just proud to be on the team. When track season came around I was the school’s only pole vaulter. My coach handed me a brand new 12 foot aluminum pole and I was in heaven. I did well enough that year to earn my varsity letter and was one of the very few freshmen in the “M” club.
The following year I enjoyed some amount of success and was honored to be invited to the CU relays, an annual track and field meet for the top high school and college athletes from all over Colorado. I was on the field with some world-class jocks, an over 15 foot pole vaulter from CU and the world record holder in the shot-put.
My junior year I competed and won the District championship and earned not only a gold medal, but a red star for my high school letter sweater. We were a new high school and I was the first “all-district” athlete in any sport. I strutted around proudly showing off my bright red star. A couple of wrestlers had won conference gold stars, but I had the only red one.
I left high school and never got to compete in what would have been my senior year. I joined the U. S. Marines instead. I thought I had hung up my track shoes forever when an announcement came out about a coming 29 Palms Marine Corps Base intramural track meet. I ran to Special Services (they lend athletic and camping gear to Marines) to see if they had a pole I could use. I came back to my barracks carrying a shinny-new 14 foot aluminum pole. The sergeant in charge of my barracks told me what I could do with “that f—king orange flagpole.” I pleaded with him and he finally let me lay it on the floor out of the way, behind the wall lockers. The next day I went to see my First Sergeant and formally requested permission to enter the meet and to store my pole in the barracks. He gave me permission with one caveat: I had to win.
It had been over a year since I had vaulted, but I was in the best shape of my life. I had more upper body strength now than I had in high school. Vaulting came back to me and I won the base championship easily, setting a new personal best. Soon after our meet we invited the track teams from the other California Marine bases to 29 Palms for a “West Coast Marine” meet. Marine jocks showed up from MCRD San Diego, MCB Camp Pendleton, MCLB Barstow and some of the nearby Navy bases. I took ’em all on and won the title of best Marine pole vaulter on the West Coast. I was honored when some of the really serious Marine jocks invited me to join them on Saturdays at the LA Track Club.
No, my pole vaulting days were over. I was nineteen, a Marine with a wife, a new daughter, and over two years left on my enlistment. I had plans for college but no idea how I was going to earn a living in civilian life.
Fast forward to 1993, I’m the Executive Vice President of a supercomputer company headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. My local salesperson and I had just made a sales call at University of Colorado in Boulder and were headed back to the Denver airport when we realized we had time for a late lunch before catching our flights home. I remembered an old friend; Mike Broncucia, a nephew of my old boss at the gas station I worked at in high school, had opened a popular restaurant just off the turnpike. We found the restaurant and I reintroduced myself to Mike. He remembered me. We started talking about old times and he asked if I went to Mapleton High School. I told him I did back in 1959. He smiled and said my old coach was in the bar.
I was trying to figure out what to say to Coach Appuglise as Mike lead me through the restaurant to the bar. It had been 34 years. I knew Coach won’t remember me.
Mike leads me to a dimly lit table full of old Italian guys. I’m ready to introduce myself when my high school track coach jumps to his feet, grabs and hugs me. Without hesitation he greets me with, “My pole vaulter.”
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pole vaulting, also known as pole jumping, is a track and field event in which an athlete uses a long and flexible pole, usually made from fiberglass or carbon fiber, as an aid to jump over a bar. Pole jumping competitions were known to the ancient Greeks, Cretans, and Celts. It has been a full medal event at the Olympic Games since 1896 for men and since 2000 for women.
It is typically classified as one of the four major jumping events in athletics, alongside the high jump, long jump, and triple jump. It is unusual among track and field sports in that it requires a significant amount of specialized equipment in order to participate, even at a basic level. A number of elite pole vaulters have had backgrounds in gymnastics. Running speed, however, may be the most dominant factor. Physical attributes such as speed, agility and strength are essential to pole vaulting effectively, but technical skill is an equally if not more important element. The object of pole vaulting is to clear a bar or crossbar supported upon two uprights (standards) without knocking it down
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