Vaulting center Morry Sanders' little piece of heaven

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Vaulting center Sanders' little piece of heaven

BY ROBERT YATES

Posted on Sunday, July 19, 2009

Special to the Democrat-Gazette The Arkansas Vault Center, in the rural Montgomery County town of Black Springs, is where many of the state's top high school pole vaulters train.

BLACK SPRINGS - More than 20 years after raising the bar as an athlete, Morry Sanders is raising the bar as a coach. In both cases, it's all about reaching new heights.

Sanders, 39, is the state's top high school pole vault coach. His influence can be seen from border to border and felt, dramatically at times, in all seven of the state's track and field classifications.

The epicenter of the movement is an unlikely spot about 40 miles west of Hot Springs in Black Springs, a rural Montgomery Country community carved into the scenic Ouachita Mountains.

Just off Arkansas 8 lies, perhaps, the centerpiece in this town of just 114 - the indoor pole vault facility owned by the Arkansas Vault Club, a nonprofit organization founded by Sanders in 1999.

"Sometimes I have to pinch myself, because I wonder if it's really happening," Sanders said. "I spend so much time working with these kids, it's kind of like they're my own kids sometimes. It's fun watching the look on their face when they do something they didn't think they could do."

Completed early last year, the gray semicircular building rises about 50 yards north of Sanders' house and has become the training facility for most of the state's top high school vaulters, including overall record holder Sam Ewing of Lake Hamilton, a member of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette All-Arkansas track and field team.

Ewing became the second vaulter in Arkansas high school history to clear 17 feet when he won the Spring Break Open II meet March 28 at AVC's indoor facility.

Sanders also coaches, among others, McKinley Rea of Conway, the state's top female pole vaulter this year and an incoming freshman at Central Arkansas.

Then there's Cabot senior Ariel Voskamp, poised to become the state's leading female vaulter next year after recently clearing a personal-best 11-8 at the AVC indoor facility.

"Gravity," the club motto says, "never has an off day."

It's all about raising the bar. "I don't know if the indoor facility is as important as is the fact that Morry is teaching the pole vault to people to start with," said Lake Hamilton Coach Karl Koonce, who has spent almost three decades at the school. "The indoor facility has created a situation where he's not limited because of weather. Having Morry teaching the pole vault to various people around the area is the biggest thing, whether he's got an indoor facility or an outdoor facility."

Sanders, who became the state's first 16-foot vaulter as a junior at Lake Hamilton in 1987, has both and coaches approximately 100 athletes, including 23 who compete for AVC.

Among Sanders' elite pupils the past decade are five vaulters who set overall records - Brandie Plyler of Centerpoint, Stephanie Irwin of Mount Ida, Stephanie Foreman of Lake Hamilton, Spencer McCorkel of Bryant and Ewing.

It's unlikely any other high school coach in Arkansas wields a more powerful hand than Sanders, who just completed his fifth year as an assistant at Lake Hamilton.

Foreman, a sophomore at Arkansas State, set the girls' overall record (13-6 1/4) in 2008.

McCorkel, a junior at Arkansas, cleared 16-8 in 2006 to break Sanders' previous boys' overall record of 16-7, which he set as a senior at Lake Hamilton in 1988.

McCorkel also recorded the highest vault in Arkansas high school history (17-9) on June 6, 2007, at AVC's outdoor facility in Black Springs.

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Ewing cleared 16-8 /4 at the Class 6A state meet May 16 to break McCorkel's overall record, then erased Sanders' Meet of Champs record four days later

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with a jump of 16-7/4.

Overall records can only be set at state meets or the Meet of Champs.

As for Sanders' entire May scorecard, he regularly coaches eight of the 14 state champion vaulters, including Class 7A winner Rea and Class 2A winner Andrew Irwin of Mount Ida.

Irwin, a junior, owns the 5-2A West Conference record (14-8).

"It's not an awkward situation, coaching kids from other schools," said Sanders, who teaches health and physical education at Lake Hamilton Middle School. "I look it at like this: It's a lot more fun when you can get a lot of kids that are good at something. You get a lot of competition that way. If you just have one group of kids that are being coached up in the pole vault, and no one else is doing anything with the pole vault, where's the fun in that?

"I've been real fortunate that the coaches and the administration at Lake Hamilton, they're OK with me coaching kids from all over."

Sanders actually stumbled into his field of dreams.

After a storied career at Lake Hamilton, highlighted by his overall and Meet of Champs record in 1988, Sanders continued his career at Arkansas State before graduating in 1993 with a degree in exercise physiology.

He then left vaulting in the rearview mirror to begin a professional life in physical therapy and fitness.

"I guess it was seven or eight years where I didn't even see a pole vault pole," Sanders said.

Sanders moved to Black Springs in 1998 and was running the Glenwood Athletic Club the following year when he was asked by the father of Plyler - then a promising sophomore pole vaulter at nearby Centerpoint High School - to coach his daughter.

Sanders said Plyler's father embraced him because he remembered the success Sanders enjoyed at Lake Hamilton.

Brandie Plyler became a huge hit, too, setting an overall and Class 2A record (11-10) as a senior in 2001. She signed with Ole Miss.

"It kind of went from there," said Sanders, who was a Track & Field News All-American as a high school senior after clearing 16-8. "She had almost instant success, and I had a lot of other kids start jumping on the bandwagon. They were having success so early that I thought I missed my calling."

Looking to capitalize on the opportunity to coach, Sanders built an outdoor facility (he has a 125-foot roll-out runway of pulverized rubber) on his property in 2000 and received his teaching certification in 2001.

Within two years of building the outdoor facility, Sanders said he thought about enclosing that area, which is adjacent to his new indoor building.

The timing wasn't right for an indoor version then, Sanders said, because the project would have been cost prohibitive.

For starters, Sanders didn't have the land.

Sanders said he tried to buy property owned by neighbors Jerry and Linda Bobo a few years ago, but they weren't interested in selling.

"I just thought that it wasn't going to happen," Sanders said of an indoor facility.

But in the spring of 2007, the Bobos decided to donate approximately two acres of land adjacent to property owned by Sanders.

Sanders had a foot - or in this instance, a pole - in the door with the couple since they are the grandparents of Ewing, who will be a senior this fall at Lake Hamilton.

"Jerry and his wife stopped by one day and said, as a family, that they wanted to give me this land as a gift," Sanders said. "I just took that as a sign that it was time to build a building. They're great people. It was like the perfect storm with everything coming together at the right time."

Sanders still needed a loan from Diamond Bank in Hot Springs to see his vision emerge.

Sanders wouldn't disclose the cost of the indoor building, but said it wasn't cheap.

"It was kind a weird deal," Sanders said. "At first I thought there wasn't a bank in the country that would want to loan me that much money just to build a pole vault building. I was right about most of them."

The project was launched in the summer of 2007 with a bulldozer clearing several trees and thick brush - in some places 30 feet high - for five consecutive days, Sanders said.

The slab was finished in December 2007.

The first of 83 galvanized steel arches was raised Dec. 27, 2007, with the project completed the following April.

The state's only other indoor facility dedicated strictly to pole vaulting, Sanders said, is Bell Athletics (owned by former world record holder Earl Bell) near Jonesboro.

"It took quite a bit of work, but it was a perfect place," Sanders said. "I loved it because it's just right next to my property. If I want to go out to the building, I don't have to drive. I just have to cross the yard."

The structure is 170 feet long, 60 feet wide, 24 feet tall and held together by more than 30,000 half-inch bolts, Sanders said.

Concrete runways of 140 feet and 95 feet are covered by Mondo, the official surface of the Olympic Games. Thirty 400-watt halogen lights hang from the ceiling. Seven skylights were cut into the arches for more visibility.

"On a sunny day, we don't have to use the lights," Sanders said.

The building isn't air conditioned, but there is a woodburning stove for heat in the winter.

Sanders said his electric bill for the facility normally averages about $50 per month.

Last month's bill, he said, was $115 because AVC hosted two camps and three meets.

"We've had good intentions to keep using the outdoor facility," Sanders said. "But since we've been inside, it's been hard to want to go out and get out in the sun and wind, when we can be in the shade."

During the spring and summer, Sanders and Steve Irwin, another Lake Hamilton graduate and the father of Stephanie and Andrew Irwin, conduct training sessions every Wednesday and Sunday.

The $10 fee Sanders charges athletes each session hasn't changed in 10 years, he said, adding his only other sources of AVC-related income come through camps, clinics and selling poles manufactured by Altius.

Sanders said AVC owns approximately 80 poles. Most vaulters, Sanders said, don't own their own poles.

"This is not about money," Sanders said. "I just love coaching the kids. It's really kind of a hobby of mine. I joke around with people and tell everybody that pole vault building up there is my bass boat. It's a labor of love for me."

In other words, it's all about raising the bar.