Article on Coaches Looking for Gymnasts to Vault

[rainbowgirl28]

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/03 ... _16_05.txt


Coaches discover vaulting a natural extension for overgrown gymnasts

By: TOM SHANAHAN - For the North County Times

High school track and field coaches often tell of recruiting athletes off the school's football team. Such stories are as old as prep sports and PE classes.

But have you heard about track coaches searching for girls with a gymnastics background?

Gymnasts, they contend, develop speed and strong upper bodies and have no fear of flying through the air. They are as natural for the pole vault as are running backs for the sprints.


"I've told girls, 'Believe it or not, you've been training for the pole vault for the last eight years of your life; you just didn't know it,' " said Rancho Bernardo High's Tom Martin, a physical education teacher long recognized as one of the state's top pole vault coaches. "About three-quarters of the girls on our team have experience in gymnastics."

But the coaches aren't looking for pixies. They're seeking the girl who has outgrown gymnastics.

The county's two leading returning girls vaulters are Rancho Bernardo seniors Kate Mattoon and Sally Liu. Both are former gymnasts. So was Tracy O'Hara, a Rancho Bernardo alumnus who won the CIF state title in the pole vault in 1998, three NCAA titles (two indoor, one outdoor) at UCLA and now trains as a 2008 Olympic hopeful at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista.

"The pole vault is almost like a fifth gymnastics event," O'Hara said. "I still train in gymnastics a couple of days a week at the Mission Valley YMCA. There is a lot of body awareness you get from gymnastics that helps you in the pole vault. After you plant the pole, you want to know where you are in relation to the bar."

Mattoon cleared 12 feet, 1-inch and Liu 11-7 last year to rank 1-2 in the county. Mattoon is the two-time defending CIF champion.

On the boys side, El Camino High's Derek Scott is the defending CIF champion. Scott, a safety on the Wildcats' football team, cleared 15-10 last year and is ranked No. 1 in the state and No. 2 in the nation this year after clearing 16-0 in January at the prestigious Reno Summit.

Mattoon and Scott share much in common now that they are seniors and defending CIF champions, but they had little in common when they took up the sport as freshmen.

Scott is from a high school with little tradition in the event. He considered himself a football player, even though his father, Jeff, a high school vaulter in Seattle, showed his son some fundamentals in the event in middle school.

"At first I wasn't interested," he said. "I thought it was dumb. But one day I started messing around in the backyard with a pole on my own. Now it's something I work hard at."

The year before Scott arrived at El Camino, the Wildcats didn't have any vaulters on their track team.

"When he first started, we just had someone supervising him and a couple of other kids for safety reasons," El Camino coach Sean Helgesen said. "Since then I've hired a coach (Tim Dowling), and we have six boys and four girls."

Mattoon, now 5-foot-6, took up the sport when she decided her arms and legs were too long to continue in gymnastics.

"The swinging motion in the pole vault is the same as learning to get up on the uneven bars in gymnastics," Mattoon said.

Said Liu: "The pole vault is the same kind of feeling you get in gymnastics flying from bar to bar. It's an indescribable feeling."

At the Magdalena Ecke YMCA Gymnastics Center in Carlsbad, gymnastics director Quinn Shannon said it has become an annual rite for him to explain to at least one of the girls he coaches that they've grown too tall and should consider trying the pole vault.

"It's a natural step that I learned about when I coached at Utah State," Shannon said. "The vaulters would come over to work out with the gymnasts."

Jan Johnson, the National Pole Vault Safety Chairman for USA Track and Field and a coach at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo, believes the advent of girls pole vaulting "is the best thing to happen to the pole vault in the last 50 years."

There is increased media coverage, and he believes from observing vaulters at his camps that girls temper the daredevil attitude in boys. He said there is a new trend in pole vaulting that has coaches telling boys who take unnecessary risks they won't coach them.

"When boys are training around girls, they're more mature," he said. "Girls want to learn the fundaments before they go up the progression with a longer run or hold their hands higher on the pole."

The National Federation of High School Athletic Association put tougher safety rules in place two years ago after a series of serious accidents. The landing pits have been lengthened and widened and the collar pads have been added to the box.

Thus, there are bigger pits to tumble in. Perhaps that's another selling point for high school coaches to recruit gymnasts for the pole vault.

[scubastevesgirly]

man...i wish my parents would've put my in gymnastics...

[PVPirate26]

i wish i would have done gymnastics too! our vault team tried doing some gymnastics lessons in the preseason to see if it would help but we've already missed out on way too much!

[jmpngblonde]

that article is so true! I was a gymnast for like 12 years, but at 5'2 I was too tall (I'm 5'6 now..taht would not have worked) and the only reason I started vaulting was bc people kept saying oh if you quit gym you should try pole vaulting. It was the best thing I ever did...I love it and plan to go to college with it. And all the experience I had in gymnastics helped me a lot wiht the pole vault....but if you werent a gymnast, as the case w most of my teammates, just doing some pullovers, tapswings, and what not on the bars can be super helpful.

[rainbowgirl28]

I think this is a GREAT article because it will hopefully get a few more people who have never heard of pole vaulting to try it. I would like to think that a few people saw this article and thought "Gee I know a gymnast that just quit because she was too tall..."

[vcpvcoach]

I wish the article was more able Tom Martin and his program. As a coach who has to compete against him, I admire his program and his success. I should also say it sucks going to the San Diego Section finals and having to jump against his athletes.
At the Summit, he took the time to outline his program and to help me out with mine. He is such a class act.
With that being said, Derek and his coach, Tim Dowling, deserve another article to themselves. Derek is going to light up the State Meeting here in California.
I do hope for gymnasts in my program but, I find a strong athlete can be as good. And, they need to coachable. Primadonna's need not apply.