I admit: I'm superstitious. I believe in the supernatural power of prayer, karma, positive energy and good vibes. The sharing of joy and happiness can help us get through the cold and darkness of this administration.
Though I pole vaulted each year of junior high and high school, I was not very good at it. Certainly I wasn't as good as it as my brother, nine years older than me who had went to the state competition in pole vaulting and held the school record for eight years until it was broken my junior year.
I had the upper body and the abdominal strength, but I never had the sprinter's speed to really be a good pole vaulter.
To pole vault, you stand back on the long, narrow runway and run holding the pole steady until you plant it in the sloped box. Your momentum and weight bends the fiberglass pole and you drive your right knee up to drive your feet up high. With your shoulders you push yourself higher and twist with your stomach when you meet the maximum height and push away from the pole to sail over the cross bar. Then you twist back to make sure you don't hit the cross bar with your chest on the way down and you spread out to land on your back on the mats below.
That is, if you do it correctly.
I occasionally placed second or third in the meets. I wasn't a bad pole vaulter. I was decent. But I'd never be as good as my brother.
He worked with me at it. That probably reads as a nice, brotherly activity. It wasn't. It was often stressful and frustrating for both of us.
Our pole vaulting mats were placed along the football field sidelines right next to the telephone pole at the 50-yard line that held the lights. My senior year, I hit that telephone pole at least two or three times as my pole vault attempts catapulted me to the side instead of up. I once landed on a hurdle in lane two of the cinder track. I broke the top of the wooden hurdle. That hurt. A lot.
I finished second at the county meet, but the big meet was the Scioto Valley Conference championship. My track team was awesome that year. We lost only one match up, our single A school was beat out by an AAA school in a 10-team meet. We later beat them in a tri-meet.
We were the easy favorites to win the league championship as a team. But I wanted to win a meet.
My brother called around to his old pole vaulting buddies coaching at other schools and bothered several other poles. We had decided I needed a stiffer pole (I know I'm setting my self up with that one) to vault high enough to beat my rivals. I was getting too much bend out of my pole and it wasn't "throwing" me high enough. That weekend, we went down to the track to practice with the different poles and for me to adjust to them. During one of the vaults, I felt a painful strain in my right chest muscle. I was done for the day.
The next morning I could barely raise my right arm. I got a doctor's appointment and the doctor thought I had a severe muscle strain. He suggested I alternate heat and ice on it and I'd have full recovery in a few weeks.
This was Monday. The meet was on Friday.
I tried to practice on Tuesday, but couldn't really vault. Wednesday wasn't much better, but by Thursday I managed to vault even though I didn't feel I had much strength in the right side of my chest.
On Friday morning, I dressed for the meet. My brother was officiating. (At our level of track, the field officials usually were volunteers from the different schools though we had paid officials for the track events.)
I ran my warm up laps with the team and stretched and we wished each other good luck and went to our different areas.
I waited in line with my pole at the end of the runway for my first warm up vault. I ran, planted and my momentum took me sideways as I was upside in my vault. I hit the top of the right crossbar about 12 feet up in the air and fell, twisting enough to avoid landing on my head. Instead, I landed with my chest draped across the metal pipe of the base about two feet off the ground. My body bounced off the metal and I landed on my back in the mud. I didn't move.
Before anyone arrived to me, I heard over the PA speaker, "Would any medical personnel please report to the pole vault area immediately?"
I couldn't breathe. The wind was knocked out of me. When someone usually has the wind knocked out of him - an old football trick - is you raise his tail off the ground to get him breathing right again. But apparently my fall looked so bad the other pole vaulters feared moving me so I was on the ground grasping for breath.
My mother, who was an emergency medical technician with the volunteer fire company across the road from our farm, arrived first followed by my older sister, the registered nurse. They felt around my ribs and they thought nothing was broken but they couldn't say for certain without X-rays. Coach Whittaker and the athletic director, Mr. Mace, stood over me. They wanted me to go to the hospital for examination. I looked at them and shook my head no and lied and told them I was alright. I got up and wiped the mud off me and picked up my pole. The other pole vaulters - a close knit bunch even though we were competitors - asked if I was already and I told them I was.
I got back in line and waited, feeling apprehensive and in considerable pain in my chest and ribs. I had broken a rib in football my junior year and had badly bruised ribs my senior year. Both hurt equally bad to tell the truth. Each breath hurt. You don't realize how much you breathe until you have injured your chest wall really badly. Then you notice each and every breath.
I stared down at the box at the end of the runway and raised my 14-foot-long pole and sprinted and planted and drove my feet up but realized I was going right once again. I hit the top of the right standard with my back in the area of my left kidney. My momentum this time knocked the standard over and gravity pulled me down with it. I landed on the metal post on my left kidney. It felt like someone had whacked me a kidney punch only he used a ballbat instead of a fist. I rolled over on the ground and for a second thought I was going to pass out. I don't think I screamed but God knows I wanted to and if I did no one has ever said anything to me about it. So maybe I didn't.
As my mom and sister and a doctor who came down from the stands examined and poked and prodded me, the athletic director stood over me and said that was it. I was going to the hospital. I looked at my brother. "You do what you want," he said. I looked at Mr. Mace. I told him I couldn't quit.
I remember him looking at me sadly and he shook his head and patted my shoulder and told me to be careful. But he knew the relationship between my brother and me.
And he also knew, to paraphrase Stephen King in "It" that, "You can't be careful pole vaulting, mister."
I didn't take any more warm up vaults. I wasn't really sure if I could go on to be honest, but I couldn't quit. It was my last league meet in my senior year.
I normally vaulted at the opening heights to get my rhythm in and to get my confidence. Instead, when the competition began at 9 feet, I passed. At 9 feet, 6 I passed again.
I waited until 10 feet to open. As I stood at the end of the runway, I couldn't get the thoughts of what happened on my first two warm up vaults out of my mind. The worst thing you can do in pole vaulting is to think. My coach always said he always picked the craziest people on the squad to be his pole vaulters. Sadly, that's how my football coach always said he picked the kick off squad. I'm not sure what that says about me.
I ran down the runway and instead of planting, at the last moment I ran through and broke the plane of the standards and crossbar. A miss. You get three chances.
On my second attempt, I ran and at the last moment could not bring myself to plant. My second miss.
On my third and final attempt at the height, I stood at the end of the runway, trying to clear all the fear, all the pain, all the thoughts from my head. Cleansing breaths didn't help because they reminded me of how much my ribs and chest hurt. So I just tried to empty my head. In pole vaulting, you have to run the same each time. You want your steps to be the same so when you plant your takeoff foot, it's close to the same spot each time. Too far back and you lose momentum. Too far in and you don't use the length of your pole to your advantage.
So I ran and planted the pole and vaulted up. God it was a sloppy vault. But I went up and over the cross bar and bumped it with my left hip on the cross over and twisted as much as I could and landed in the mat. I had bumped the cross bar to the very end of the posts holding it, but it stayed up and my partner pulled me off the mats because if it falls after you're off the mats it counts as a successful vault.
At the next height, I missed my first two attempts and made the final. The height after that, I again made it on my final attempt. And the height after that. And then there were only three of us left, me and two boys who had beaten me all season.
At 12 feet, I made it on my first attempt. I've got a picture at home that I meant to have scanned in showing me making it. It's an ugly vault and it's probably best because if any other pole vaulters saw it they would rag me on my form. I went over the cross bar sideways, unable to twist my body into the proper position. I muscled my way over instead of using technique. But I made it.
The other two competitors missed their three attempts.
I won.
Should I win a Pulitzer or become a best selling author, it will not top the pride I felt and still feel at being the 1982 Scioto Valley Conference pole vault champion.
My track coach walked up to me after and said, "OK, you ready to go to the hospital now."
My dad took me to the emergency room and I was there for about five hours as the nurses and doctors checked me out. No ribs were broken though they said I had bruised my entire chest wall. I can't remember if I pissed blood or not, but I do remember they did some exams to see how badly I had hurt my left kidney. It was just a severe bruise too. Nothing was broken.
And that is my happy story this evening. Your happy story may be about anything you wish it to be.
