Mike Torrez Article (FL)

[rainbowgirl28]

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/ ... 340110.htm

Pure adrenaline

Torres brings experience to Mustangs pole vaulters

EMERY SKOLFIELD

Herald Staff Writer




BRADENTON - In an almost symphonic motion, Mike Torres tilted a 14-foot fiberglass pole toward the rich blue sky, rocked his hands back and lowered it back to earth.


Torres had found his groove. It was time to go.


With a sprinter's burst, Torres, a senior on the Lakewood Ranch High track and field team, began a steady 70-foot approach toward the box - a steel pothole that would play an integral role in his impending aerial journey.


If he could plant the pole into the box at precisely the right moment, if he could position his hands properly and swing his body smoothly, he'd be in for an incredible ride.


"If your run is on and your plant's on, you invert and it just shoots you," said the 5-foot-7, 145-pound Torres. "It's pure adrenaline rush."


"Like you're flying," Mustangs senior Caleb Frazee said.


As Torres admits, the essence of the pole vault - flinging one's body into the atmosphere - is not altogether rational. Maybe even a little nuts.


"You're sort of thinking, 'I'm not supposed to be doing this,' " said Torres, who is among the state's top five pole vaulters after setting a school record of 14 feet at the Manatee County meet two weeks ago. "Your body is telling you no. If anything goes wrong, you're gonna be hurting."


Lakewood Ranch coach Ernest Jones, who has been around track and field since the days of cinder tracks and sawdust landing pits, admits he never was daring enough to try the pole vault.


"Oh, no," said Jones, who was a standout at Woodruff (S.C.) High in the mid-1970s. "My coach wanted me to, but that was back when we had aluminum poles. Wasn't up my alley.


"The pole vault takes a little bit of a kamikaze mentality."


By now, it's routine for Torres, and fear, he claims, isn't much of a factor.


It wasn't always that way.


"Once, I came off over the left side during a race, and I just missed hitting some of the runners," said Torres, who didn't know what the pole vault was when his former high school coach - Joe Bolin of Roseville (Calif.) High - asked if the then-freshman would like to try out. "I've been rejected a couple times when it just threw me backward, right on my back."


While he admits he's still learning and improving each day, Torres, who moved to Bradenton with his mother from California a week before school began, is the de facto pole vault coach at Lakewood Ranch this spring, spreading the knowledge he picked up from older vaulters when he was a wide-eyed freshman at Roseville.


"He's got great form, and he's been telling me a lot of different things that help," said Frazee, who finished second at the county meet with a personal-best vault of 11-6. "I have in my mind what I'm supposed to do, it's just a matter of putting it into play."


Torres works under the tutelage of Sarasota Cardinal Mooney head coach John Raleigh, a former college pole vaulter at Virginia Tech, a few times a week. Raleigh has worked with many of the area's vaulters through his Sky's the Limit club.


Torres hopes his training will someday lead to a college scholarship, but first he'd like to win a state title. Last year, Orlando Boone's Shane Aronson finished second in Class 4A with a vault of 14 feet. The winner, state record holder and Stanford recruit Ben Dickens, went 15-6.


As a junior in California, Torres' vault of 13-7½ left him one place from a spot in the state meet.


"That's when I started buckling down," said Torres, who has cleared 14-6 in practice.


After three failed attempts at 14 feet during a recent practice, Torres toed the rubber-padded runway and prepared for one last attempt.


The run, the plant, the hold, it all clicked. As he catapulted toward the bar - his body upside-down and perpendicular to the ground - Torres pushed himself away from the pole in a rowing motion, at the same time twisting and gliding over the bar.


"While you're up there, you have time to think, 'Yeah, I got it,' or, 'Oh, crap, I didn't,' " Torres said.


Torres smiled as he tumbled back toward earth, landing gently in the cushioned pit.


Pure adrenaline rush.

[jmpngblonde]

[quote="rainbowgirl28"]Torres hopes his training will someday lead to a college scholarship, but first he'd like to win a state title. Last year, Orlando Boone's Shane Aronson finished second in Class 4A with a vault of 14 feet. The winner, state record holder and Stanford recruit Ben Dickens, went 15-6.


Ben won my county last year, so I know that he went 15-9.5 at state :-)...and it amazes me all those articles about vaulters not having good coaching or poles...i feel so lucky to have two coaches at my school that know the vault :-)

[APKpolevaulter]

I jumped against him Hes such a cool guy and a great vaulter. He encouraged me even though we were fighting for 1st.