Leap of faith

Every second and every movement count for prep pole vaulters

Seventy-five feet away, pole vaulter Andy Erickson faced the bar -10 feet, 6 inches high.

In his head - another hurdle, maybe tougher.

Four days earlier at another track meet, he couldn't clear 9-6 three times- something he should've done easily.

That made him mad at himself.

Gnawed at the back of his mind for the rest of the week.

The Whitefish senior's got the potential to clear 12 feet.

Four days earlier, his torso cleared the bar by more than a foot each time. Each time, that led to a nanosecond of hubris, of relaxation, of glancing at the bar below -always causing his leg to drop to knock the bar off its braces.

"It's the split seconds that'll kill ya," vaulting coach Rob Carter said.

Now it was Saturday at the Missoula Big Sky Invitational, second meet of the year.

A vaulter picks the height that he or she begins competing at.

Erickson and Carter chose 10 feet, 6 inches.

The theory: Erickson won't mentally shut off and drag his foot during that last micro-second above the bar.

Erickson's right foot sprang back to begin his run.

Coiled. Bounced twice, still in place. Obsessively. Individualistic. A ritual that differs from vaulter to vaulter.

He exploded into a sprint, already accelerating when he hit the ….

… First Second

Erickson's knees strutted high - flashier than those of a rookie vaulter.

That's for more power. He had slightly less than four seconds to hit top speed.

The vertical 14-foot pole bounced up and down in a steady rhythm, arms acting as shock absorbers. A sideways or forward wobble would knock Erickson off-balance, like a gyroscope going out of kilter.

No conscious thoughts.

The six-foot, 154-pound Erickson focused on the recessed, hole-like box in front of the bar. Eyes locked on it.

Muscle memory and heavily-practiced instinct took over by the …

… Second Second

Erickson's legs sped up more.

He had been pole-vaulting for three years since his friend Kaleb Prestegaard - now arguably Northwest Montana's best high school vaulter -talked him into the sport.

The sport's complexity appealed to him.

A couple dozen actions must happen sequentially -bam-bam-bam-bam-bam -in about five seconds for a successful vault.

Off by a micro-second, off by a micro-motion -and failure pops up.

That fascinates him.

It took him two years to study and practice each individual motion over and over, gradually combining them into a complex, precisely timed sequence to go faster than the speed of his conscious thoughts.

He's still tweaking his techniques.

Erickson wants to study engineering at Montana Tech. But he never thought of pole vaulting as a collection of physics problems in acceleration, torque, leverage, momentum, tension and acrobatics.

His legs pound faster and faster as he reached the …

… Third Second

Don't glance at the bar.

Focus on the box.

DON'T LOOK AT THE BAR!!!

Every beginning vaulter can't help it. Even experienced vaulters sometimes slip up at this. Every human instinct screams to look at the bar -at the target. It's a hard habit that must be broken.

Planting the pole's tip in the box is what's really important. A split-second attention lapse could lead to a bad plant of the pole.

Have faith.

No faith equals failure.

Erickson knew - just trusted - exactly where his left foot would hit the running track for the sixth time in a subconscious mental count - something he quit consciously thinking about a long time ago.

Don't stretch to make that last step. Don't stutter-step.

Each hurts concentration. Each kills momentum when full-throttle speed is vital.

The pole's tip jammed into he box.

Erickson leapt - a precise ballet-like jump, one leg extended, the other bent.

His left hand thrusted forward and up on the pole, bending it as he headed up and over the box by the …

… Fourth Second

Here it got plenty complicated.

Erickson's body contorted, flew and twisted so fast that his conscious thoughts could not keep up - or would screw him up if they could.

"There're so many things you do at one time that you normally don't do," Carter said.

His legs swung up over his head -propelled by momentum and endless stomach crunches.

For a nanosecond, Erickson was upside down, like doing a head stand - a flying move that it took him two years to perfect, or even overcome the scary weirdness of it.

"To hang on the pole and get up there and hang upside down, it really gets you out of your comfort zone," Carter said.

Erickson crossed his right leg over his left.

That spun his body so his toes, not his heels, were down as his torso snaked over the cross bar -his body curving around it with a couple inches to spare.

The bar stayed. Erickson cleared on his first try.

His body hit the mat at the …

… Fifth Second

It was do-or-die time.

A vaulter gets three tries to clear a bar at a specific height before being knocked out of a meet.

Erickson cleared the 11-foot-high bar on the first try. His leg still dipped to brush the bar, rattling it,

On his back on the mat, Erickson looked at the bouncing bar, thinking: "Oh, no."

Several spectators exhaled simultaneously as the rattling stopped -'staying in place.

"What??!!" Erickson thought.

"Oooooooooo, you're so lucky," Carter murmured.

Eleven feet, six inches.

First attempt -pole went crooked into the box and Erickson went chest-first into the bar.

Second attempt - Erickson glanced at the bar as he began sailing over it. That minuscule nod dipped his head and then his lower body.

Clang!

Gotta stop glancing at the bar! Even as he flies over it!

Erickson paced, waiting for his final try.

He briefly thought about the his head and foot.

Nothing else.

The trick was not to overthink.

Other than a quick mental reminder of the problem of the moment, Erickson deliberately keeps his mind off his technique prior to jumps.

Trust his training. Trust his muscle memory. Just fix that one glitch.

"When you're off, its really subtle, not something huge," Erickson said.

Erickson knew there were several vaulters at the meet who had jumped higher than his best.

At any track meet, everyone knows their own times and distances and heights -and those of competitors who are better.

Winners are fairly easy to predict.

In pole vaulting, everyone ultimately fails to clear except the person placing first.

That didn't bother Erickson.

Perfection on his part. A slip-up by a better vaulter.

That's what Erickson sought.

Erickson's turn.

He poised, coiled up, and sprung up and down on his right foot.

Annnnnnnd. … was off.

Legs drove faster and faster through the …

First Second

Faster and faster through the …

Second Second

His pole shifted from vertical to pointed slant-down at the box by the …

Third Second

This is when pole vaulters most often lose it.

Head games scramble minds. Gut instincts kick in.

Sometimes, a vaulter clicks through a mental checklist as he or she sprints - and realizes something was forgotten a split second earlier.

Or is not sure whether something was forgotten.

The dangers of overthinking.

The vaulter tries to stop before the pole or body pass one of the points-of-no-return on the run that forbid a do-over -like the pole tip striking the box.

But most commonly, something just doesn't feel right.

Vaulters just don't know what.

They'll abort a run at the last second, and can't explain why to a coach.

It's vibes, premonitions, feelings.

More routine that you'd think.

And each with the hope that a run was aborted in time so it doesn't count as official.

That bothered Erickson at the meet four days earlier.

But this time, it didn't happen to Erickson as he planted his pole, leapt up and bent it -'swinging his legs up by the …

Fourth Second

Erickson glanced at the bar again as he began to sail over.

He couldn't help it.

"You want to know how much you're gonna make it by. You want to know. But it's a bad thing," he said.

Clang!

Erickson was out. Eleven feet had tied Erickson's personal best.

He and Carter huddled. Both believe 12 feet will come by the end of the season.