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Monday, May 21, 2007

Run fast, plant, bend, pull, twist, push, land

Yay! Today at track practice it was all but cemented that if I'm back next year as an assistant track coach, I'll be the official pole vault coach. This means a TON to me. Spaulding High School hasn't had pole vaulting in years, I believe 7 or 8 in fact. Even then, apparently , since I left in 1990, there hasn't been a really competitive vaulter. I'm not sure of that though, since I did leave behind Steve C., who I thought did pretty well... even hitting or breaking my record (11'6"). Anyway, (Mr) Shawn Woods (the AD and current as well as my old track coach) said there really wasn't much.

I've been saying all along since I started down the path of becoming a teacher... I want to coach track. In that, I also really wanted to coach vaulting. I haven't actually vaulted since the spring of 19992, my only year on the UVM Track & Field team. I stunk. I had to relearn how to vault properly, since I mostly taught myself in high school. I only vaulted in one outdoor meet and I believe 2 indoor meets. I still never bettered my 11'6" record.

Spaulding doesn't have vaulting because of some cockamamie national requirement for a specific set of matts that cost in the area of $4000. At a school without a solid number of vaulters, that was too much money to justify buying them. This means that the current plan is that I take the vaulters to another local high school (about 7 miles away or so). That just sucks. I'm not interested in that kind of hassle. I'll do it if that's the only option though. However, I intend on trying to find the money some how. I'm no fund raiser, but perhaps I can come up with something the kids can do. And yes, there are interested people. Even cooler... a girl runner is the one who is getting this thing jump started. Actually, I was literally about to talk to Shawn about it today when he ended up bringing it up before me. I'll need to get certified, but I believe it's not a big deal.. and I'm going to start tonight looking into coaching information, potential for grants and all that.


To top it off, it's incentive for me to get my ass in shape. There's no friggin way I'm going to coach pole vaulting without getting my butt up there on a pole. So, I need to strengthen my shoulders, lose some weight and pre-load with some kind of exercises so that day one, I can do it as an example. I might get my ballsiness back bit too. I'm sure my wife won't be too happy about it, but she'll be ok. :) I hope we don't have to buy new poles as well... yikes, and worse, if we needed to buy a special pole for me to use... yikes!! Grr.

Anyway, if you know me and you're reading this and you want to donate to the cause, I'm more than happy to take some $$$ off of your hands.

I'll update this entry with a pic of me vaulting in HS when I get it scanned (err, after I find it).

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