Pole vaulting legend Pat Manson wants you to know that his sport is not a dangerous, daredevil activity. Smoky Hill High School track coach Mark Cooper wants you to know that pole vaulting is much more complex than people think.
But it does take guts. And Chase Cooper, arguably the state’s best high school vaulter, wants you to know that, too.
“Yeah,” said Chase, a Smoky Hill junior and Mark Cooper’s son. “My grandfather always said you have to be a little bit crazy to be a pole vaulter.”
And he admits to fitting the bill.
“Oh, yeah,” Chase said, laughing. “I’m insane.”
After all, it is still a person, a pole, a pad and several feet of height to cover to reach the crossbar. But the sport is not suffering from any lack of interest or participation. In fact, it continues to grow at a high rate, particularly among females, who are improving in the sport at rapid rates. Longmont’s Emily Stover is one of the nation’s best this season and set a state record of 13-3 on Friday at the 4A state meet.
“It’s just a great sport,” said John Carmony, a former high school and college pole vaulter who is a Colorado state track meet official. “I’ve skied and water-skied and run, but there’s just nothing more exhilarating than having a good vault.”
Manson agrees. He still holds the state record at 17-7-1/2, and the state meet record at 17-3, which he set in 1986 at Aurora Central.
“It’s exciting,” he said. “I think it would be like if you’ve ever stood on a high diving board, or a low diving board, for that matter. Right before jumping off there’s that trepidation before you go because it’s exciting. Most sports have that same feeling. But huge strides have been made to make the event safer over the last several years.”
Landing pads have been widened and pads have been added around the planting box, where the pole goes in on a jump. But perhaps the most important requirement is that poles be able to bear the weight of the athlete. Poles generally have not changed — they have been fiberglass for years — but in effort to prevent injury, states, including Colorado, mandate that poles are rated at or above a person’s body weight.
In the past, competitors would use “softer” poles rated below their weight with the idea it would bend more, resulting in a higher jump.
Still, Manson, who holds a popular pole vaulting summer camp and helps run a pole vaulting club in Boulder, said the sport has never been safer.
“They’ve made all these changes that are good for the event,” Manson said.
Mark Cooper has been track coach at Smoky Hill since 1975 and a pole vaulter for much longer. His father, Don, was a world-class pole vaulter, and Mark has passed the tradition on to his children. Kirk Cooper, who is now at Kansas, was a two-time state champion in 2005 and 2006, and Chase won his first title Saturday.
Mark said those who have been in gymnastics stand a better chance of improving in the sport faster.
“Learning how to do cartwheels, learning how to swing on high bars, learning how to do handsprings, back handsprings, roundoffs; and jumping on a trampoline, learning how to do a back flip, a front flip, and learning how to swing on rings, all of those are components that teach you an awareness of your body in the air, which can be transmitted and related into the aspects of the pole vault,” he said.
But none of that is achieved without countless hours perfecting the craft.
“It takes pretty much a lifetime to master,” Chase Cooper said. “It’s not something that you can just pick up and go do. You have to really live the life of a pole vaulter. You can’t just be a pole vaulter part of the time and something else the other times. You have to be a pole vaulter 100 percent of the time.”
Chris Dempsey: 303-954-1279 or cdempsey@denverpost.com
