Cody Cunnington can't get enough pole vaulting (CA)

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http://www.marinij.com/sports/ci_9144523

Prep track: Drake's Cunnington can't get enough pole vaulting

Vince Tannura
Article Launched: 05/03/2008 05:02:41 PM PDT

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Drake High pole vaulter Cody Cunnington would like to continue his sport at... (IJ photo/Alan Dep)
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Cody Cunnington's heart is linked to the Drake High track team in more ways than one.
The junior student-athlete is currently dating sprinter Zoe Fritz, a fact in which coach Bill Taylor finds constant amusement.

"I sing songs to them," Taylor said. "It makes it so much fun for me. I kid them every now and then, in front of the team meeting, too!"

While Cunnington's young love is cause for diversion for his coach, his more significant love affair, at least as far as the track team is concerned, is that which he shares with the pole vault.

His love of the sport has translated into unrivaled success this season. Cunnington's personal record of 15 feet ranks him third all time in the county, and puts him in California's top 20 with a chance to go even higher Saturday at 1 p.m. when Drake and the rest of the MCAL schools meet at San Rafael High for the MCAL finals.

Cunnington always has been into action sports. He has been running track since middle school, enjoys wakeboarding and skiing, and has played soccer for three years at Drake.

But it was not until his freshman year in high school that he truly became enamored with one particular sport.

"When I look at my weekly schedule, I don't really think about school," Cunnington said with a laugh. "I mainly think about pole vaulting. It's, like, all I think about. Throughout the day my mind goes on a lot of pole-vaulting tangents."

While Cunnington admits to being a joker, and not the most "astute" of students,

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he has certainly excelled in studying the art of pole vaulting. Since picking up the sport as a freshman, Cunnington has improved his vault from 11 feet to 13 feet as a sophomore, and finally to 15 feet as a junior.
Since the Pirates have never had an expert pole vault coach during that time, Cunnington has had to take it upon himself to learn the fundamentals of the event.

Last summer, he signed up to attend former Olympic bronze medalist Jan Johnson's pole vaulting camp in San Luis Obispo, but broke his wrist at a football camp less than two months before the camp was slated to begin. Cunnington was so intent on attending the camp he spent hours on end doing physical therapy, and in just a month and a half his arm was fully healed.

What he found out at the camp, however, was that his pole vaulting still needed a lot of work.

"I really stripped myself down to the basics," Cunnington said. "I had to start all over and build back up from there. It's hard to get rid of bad habits. I'm still trying to get rid of a few."

Cunnington said that he emerged from the week-long camp with much better fundamentals, but he took a break from training while he helped lead the soccer team to a rare playoff appearance. The junior was obviously a little rusty in his first three meets of the track season, failing to clear even the initial marks he set for himself, and thus was disqualified from all three meets.

"It was pretty disheartening," Cunnington said. "Especially with the whole team watching, to no-height was pretty embarrassing."

In addition, Cunnington was struggling to get used to his new pole, which he ordered without any assistance, just guessing as to what would be the appropriate pole for himself. In order to finally learn to use the pole correctly, Cunnington had to sit down and study other members of his craft on tape.

"I was watching a lot of pole vault videos and visualizing all day, every day how I could bend this pole," Cunnington said. "I backed up my step so that I had a much longer runway and worked hard with (coach Mark Foehr) improving my core strength, and now I'm able to get through it consistently."

Now that Cunnington has smoothed out his technique and adjusted to his new pole, he is a force in the MCAL. No other pole vaulter is within 2 feet of him. He is so advanced in his knowledge of the sport that he claims Taylor considers him one of the coaches.

"Nobody at Drake knows anything about technique. I'm the one who brought the different drills and techniques," Cunnington said. "Mr. Foehr was vaulting when they had steel poles and landed in sawdust. Mr. Taylor considers me a coach. When he counts up the coaches, he counts me too."

While he is eager to help his teammates learn proper technique, Cunnington also is focused on himself and improving his height each meet. He needs just six more inches to match the county pole vault record. And if he is to challenge that record, he will have to do it on a sore hamstring, just as he did in the dual meet finale against Redwood and Tam when he set his personal record.

Taylor is confident that the injury will not impede the young athlete's performance.

"When an outstanding athlete tells you they can do something, you believe it," Taylor said. "And you still worry, but when you have an athlete that's really an athlete, you can trust them."

Cunnington is an outstanding athlete, and he will likely receive recognition and collegiate attention as such in the near future. While visualizing pole-vault success is still his primary concern, the classroom joker said that he is also taking his studies more seriously now that there may be a college scholarship on the line.

In short, Cunnington will do whatever it takes to be able to continue his love affair with pole vaulting.

"If I'm going to do it in college, why stop there? I might as well try to go to the Olympics with it," Cunnington said. "After that, I would probably have to start a camp or something because I couldn't imagine not thinking about it every day. I could see myself pole vaulting until my knees give out."