Twelve Feet, Eleven Inches

Well Journal, here we are again in the wee hours of the morning. I'm not quite sure why I wake up so often between 3am and 4am, the witching hour, but when I do it is always with a head full of thoughts. It's as if my mind never rests even when I do. This is often a troubling situation for me but it is also the hour that I am the most creative and full of thoughtful insight. Perhaps it is an overlooked gift. Anyway, I thought I'd share a story with you that I've never shared with anyone because, in my wee hour mind, it relates to an extremely unfortunate current event and, perhaps, someone in this world may one day read this story and find personal strength within it.

The year was 1887 and I was a junior in high school. I was always an angry kid due to my Fathers early exit from my life and this was a concern for the teachers and school staff throughout my education. They never understood why I settled every conflict with my fists and was suspended from school numerous times every year, but 1986 had been an especially violent year for me. I had been suspended from school eight times in my sophomore year for fighting on school property. I was told that one more fight would mean permanent expulsion and was forced into weekly, one hour, after school counseling sessions.

Throughout this era of my life I was an especially tough case for my high school athletic director to come to terms with. On the one hand, I was a very gifted athlete that he wanted to refer to a university, and on the other I was one of the most self destructive teenagers he had ever known. I know this because he told me this on more than one occasion but like most conversations I had with adults in those days, it fell on deaf ears. I knew everything that I needed to know back then, it seemed. Well, I knew everything except the secret to conquering thirteen feet...

This story begins like many stories begin in a teenagers life. I stumbled onto something I was naturally good at simply through curiosity and perhaps fate. You see, I was in love with the game of football and my dream was to be a star of the high school football team. Unfortunately, as fate would have it, I wasn't gifted with a football players frame. As a freshman in high school I was promoted to the jr. varsity squad because I had the speed and open field tackling ability that was needed at the safety position. At about 130 lbs I was one of the lightest kids in the league at that level but I was good at the job and excelled at the sport. Naturally, my skill and fearless open field play immediately captured the attention of the varsity coach and in my sophomore year he promoted me to the varsity squad as a running back. What also caught his attention was my penchant to start fighting once the football season was over each year. It was his suggestion at the end of my freshman football season that put me on the varsity track team... and on that team I not only excelled, I actually became scholarship material.

I was a natural sprinter. I had always enjoyed racing with friends and cousins and my light frame made me pretty fast but training with the older kids on the varsity track team had made me very fast. I was running 11 second 100 meter races by the close of that freshman year track season and was one of the first kids in my school to be invited to the state regional competitions as a sprinter but sprinting wasn't what I had fallen in love with about the sport. Pole Vaulting was...

It all started on my first practice. While I was stretching I was watching the older boys warm up in the pole vault pit. I had to try it. It was an instant attraction and I wanted to fly over that bar. The entire sequence of events looked so powerful and so graceful to me that I instantly asked to be allowed to join that event. The coach let me try it and with a little coaching I was doing it. I had found a new love and I was addicted to the feeling of planting that pole, and swinging into the air with it as my forward momentum was first stored withing the bending pole and then surged back into me in the form of upward movement. It was such a rush. I can actually feel the power of my attraction to that event as I type this.

As time moved on and I competed, I always placed in the sprints and relays I competed in but the pole vault proved to be a struggle for me. I didn't quite have the skill or technique to compete with the older kids but I had the determination to keep trying and it was because of this that my coach allowed me to compete at this event whenever it was available. By the end of the season I had failed to place even once but my coach had promised to buy a custom pole for me for the next season that would be perfect for my light frame. He followed through on that promise and in my sophomore year, I was clearing eleven feet, two inches on average and consistently placing at meets. It felt great but I wanted to go higher.

In the off season I began practicing by myself, and although my form was lacking, I was able to push my personal best to twelve feet. By the time my junior year track season began, my coach (and now the new athletic director) had taken notice of my determination and had purchased yet another custom pole for me. This was a pole that was matched to my new, slightly heavier weight but it was also a pole that was made to allow a thirteen foot vault. A thirteen foot vault, in those days, was what was needed to place well in the event at any school and I was very determined to reach that goal. I spent hour after hour practicing with that pole in an effort to climb higher and higher but my form was not good enough and I was stuck at about twelve foot, two inches. So my coach brought in a secret weapon. He hired a former college vaulter to coach me on my form. Imagine that, an actual pro was brought in just for me. I was beyond ecstatic.

In just a few short weeks he was able to teach me to kick my legs forward and pull the pole to my chest at launch to put as much power as possible into the pole. He showed me how to straighten my left arm during the upward thrust and shove my feet into the sky. He showed me how to turn my body over as the pole began to straighten at the top of it's arc and how to push away from it to clear the bar. It all seemed so natural to me with his help and it seemed like in the blink of an eye I was clearing twelve feet, eleven inches with almost every jump. I was going to be a thirteen foot jumper. I just knew it.

As the season progressed I found that I couldn't clear twelve feet, eleven and a half inches. Try as I might, I always took the bar down with me. I could clear a twelve foot,eleven inch bar by two inches, easily, but for some reason when the bar was raised, my mind would find a way to keep me from clearing it. Either my shorts would brush it, or my elbow would catch it on the way down. It was like a meeping ghost was sitting at thirteen feet and kicking the bar over with me at every attempt. It was an infuriating experience for me and the more it happened and the stronger my will to defeat thirteen feet, the worse I jumped.

Then it happened...

I was at the Frankenmouth Invitational and I was competing against 8 area schools. I had placed well in the 100 and 200 and our relay team had taken first in the 400. It was a great day and I knew that today was going to be the day I'd finally reach thirteen feet. I can still remember standing at the top of the runway with my custom made pole gripped in my chalked hands. I had just cleared twelve feet, eleven inches and the bar was raised to thirteen feet. I was the first to jump and there was a huge audience. I remember going over every move in my head. I saw myself clearing the bar and landing on the mat. I could feel the triumph of having finally reached thirteen in front of all of those people as I began my sprint for the pit. I remember the blue sky as I raised my arms and slammed the pole home with a strong approach and I will never, for as long as I live, forget what happened next. My pole bent under, shattered and I ended my attempt by running full bore into the broken end of it. I collapsed into a heap with the wind knocked out of me. Utterly defeated and humiliated. I can still hear the scattered laughter and shock of the onlookers. Then the concern and the people running toward me thinking I had been skewered. I had failed miserably.

In the weeks that followed, I was presented with a new pole. It was special ordered and rushed to my school for the last few events of the season. I had survived the accident with some nasty scrapes and some ugly bruises but I was physically ok. I guess I was lucky but at the time I was just mentally deflated. I had completely lost the will to clear the bar. All of the encouragement and money spent on helping me do so was no match for the defeat I had given in to. I was so afraid of ever failing so spectacularly again that I never tried to jump after that. I quit because I didn't have the guts to risk failure for a silly dream. Thirteen feet, why bother, right?

Now, many years later, I look back and wish that I'd had the guts to carry on. I'm old enough now to understand that failure, even spectacular failure, is a part of being successful at anything. The difference between succeeding and failing is the ability to overcome and continue fighting for your dreams. That event taught me about failure but it was a lesson that I didn't understand I'd learned until years later when it was much too late to try, try again. The moment was gone, the dream was abandoned and I chose the easy way out rather than finding the will to continue supplementing my natural abilities with a desire to succeed and a determination to continue raising the bar and going higher. It seemed easier, and safer, to just quit.

What I realize now is that this lesson applies to so much more than pole vaulting. It was really a lesson about life. You can choose to give up when what seems like the worst possible thing in the world has happened - or you can get up, dust yourself off, accept the help of others and make another attempt to clear that damned bar.

Although I never vaulted higher than twelve feet, eleven inches, I have reached greater heights in my life than I'd ever dreamed of reaching in 1987 and just maybe it was that one fantastic failure that taught me that giving up isn't going to get you what you want in life or in love. I guess some people never get to learn this lesson because the dream they give up on is actually life itself. I hurt inside for those people because of what they leave behind and what they miss and I wish that I could be there for all of them with a word of encouragement and a tip or two on how to kick your feet to the sky and push away from the pole in order to clear the bar... but I can't. Nobody can. In then end the will has to be their own and it has to come from within.

In this life, our natural abilities can only take us so far. No matter how gifted we are, we are all going to fail spectacularly at times. Life is all about having the determination and perseverance to get back up and try again. So, if you're reading this and you're thinking of giving up, don't. Keep raising the bar. Keep trying. You owe it to yourself and to those who care and have been there to support you.