Skipping State for Graduation Activities?! (CA)

[rainbowgirl28]

Seriously?! The California meet is the toughest State Meet in the country to qualify for.

http://granitebaypt.com/detail/115894.h ... =&town_id=

Granite Bay pole-vaulters join proud legacy
Alviso, Zingheim headed to state track meet
Todd Mordhorst, Gold Country News Service

Tim Lloyd, Special to The Press Tribune
Granite Bay’s Jordon Alviso is headed to the state track meet after another strong performance at the section Masters.
Between Granite Bay, Rocklin, Placer, Roseville and Del Oro, the foothills are cranking out high-level pole-vaulters year after year.

The current crop of top boys competitors includes the Simmons twins of Rocklin, Placer’s Derrick Hinch and Granite Bay’s Jordon Alviso. All four seemed headed for a chance to medal in the event at this week’s state track meet in Clovis, but circumstances have left Alviso heading to the event as the lone Placer County boys representative.

Cale and Robbie Simmons, who finished 1-2 in the pole vault at the Masters meet, have elected to pass on state as it conflicts with their graduation activities at Rocklin, and Hinch fell short in his attempts at the Masters.

Alviso, on the other hand, finished fourth at the Masters, but his 15 foot, 4 inch top vault exceeded the minimum at-large height to qualify, and he will head south looking to represent the region. Surely, his local rivals will be cheering for him from afar.

Cale Simmons says that around the pole vault pit, animosity is absent. The Rocklin High senior is good friends with most of his top rivals, celebrating in their success and offering an encouraging word when they’re down.

“At the meets, it’s not really about who wins, just who does the best,” Simmons said. “I’m not rooting for other people to not make their vaults. Everyone wants everyone else to do well.”

Granite Bay’s Scott Roth created a buzz when he won back-to-back state titles in 2005 and 2006. He’s still flying high, winning the Pac-10 Championship last week as a sophomore at the University of Washington. Teammate Ryan Shuler also landed a college scholarship. He’s currently competing at Cal.

The friendly atmosphere has proven to foster success. The foothills feature four of the top 10 boys vaulters in the state. On the girls side, four of the top 20 marks in California this spring are from Placer County athletes.

Placer graduate Stacy Dragila - the first Olympic gold medallist in the women’s pole vault - said the community atmosphere is one of the best parts about the event.

“I know a lot of people from that area go to the Pole Vault Summit each year,” Dragila said. “It’s such a close fraternity. It’s a fun group of people. There’s a lot of different training you can do. There’s a lot that goes into it. It’s fun and it’s kind of a daredevil sport.”

Placer County girls have followed strongly in Dragila’s footsteps. Mackenzie Landry burst onto the pole vault scene last spring as a freshman at Del Oro. One year after her brother Connor starred at Placer, Landry made it to the CIF State Championships, where she took third. This year she’s even better, clearing 13-1 at the Arcadia Invitational in April.

But last week at the Masters, Landry met her match in Granite Bay sophomore Katie Zingheim, who vaulted 12-6 to take the section’s top prize. That duo, who train together, will take their head-to-head battle to Clovis for one more run at it.

Dragila has seen Placer County develop a reputation for pole-vaulting from afar.

“The coaches are doing a great job of recruiting kids to track and keeping them around, finding a niche for them,” Dragila said. “They’re having fun and I think that’s why they’re having success.”

-Kurt Johnson contributed to this report.

FYI: Vaulting to the next level

Placer County pole-vaulters who are competing, or have competed at the college level or higher:

Stacy Dragila, Placer

Paul Litchfield, Bear River

Christie Chatterley, Granite Bay

Scott Roth, Granite Bay (Pac-10 champion as a soph. at Washington)

Ryan Shuler, Granite Bay – Cal

Blair Wallingford, Roseville – Sacramento State

Kasey Burlingham, Colfax

David Rhodes, Placer

Stephanie Bagan, Granite Bay

Rachel Simmons, Rocklin

Tawny Lambuth, Placer

Tess Balcomb, Colfax

[rainbowgirl28]

http://placerherald.com/detail/116096.html

Twins vault to graduation, not state
Senior pole vaulters place first, second at Masters
By Russ Edmondson The Placer Herald

Tim Lloyd/Special to The Placer Herald
Cale Simmons says he’ll be so in the moment at Friday’s graduation that he won’t be thinking about missing the state meet.


Rocklin High senior twins Rob and Cale Simmons will skip the CIF state track and field championships in order to attend graduation Friday.

The pole vaulters qualified for the state championships after finishing first (Rob, 16-feet, 4-inches) and second (Cale, 15-10) at the Sac-Joaquin Section Masters Championship at Hughes Stadium in Sacramento on May 28. The top three pole vaulters from Masters qualified for the state meet.

Both Rob and Cale have qualified for state before but not together. Rob competed at state as a sophomore while Cale did the same as a junior.

The state meet is Friday (trials) and Saturday (finals) in Clovis. Rocklin’s graduation ceremony is also Friday.

Rob was ranked second in the state in the pole vault and Cale was ranked third entering Masters. Rob set his personal best at Masters (16-4) while Cale’s top mark this year has been 16-2.

The brothers were the only athletes from either Rocklin or Whitney to qualify for state.

“It was a difficult decision because we are a big part of the school community and the track community and either decision we made felt like we were letting the other side down,” Rob said. “The track community was kind of counting on us to be there for state to represent the state and the section.”

The decision to pick graduation over state was made two weeks prior to Masters.

“I really want to go to both,” Cale said. “The first thing that came to mind was ‘is it possible to do both?’ I knew they were both on the same day (track trials at 5 p.m., graduation at 7:30 p.m.) but the times were too close.

“A lot of people have told me that they think I made the right decision . . . I feel like I made a good decision and I’ll have a lot more track meets in college and there won’t be any more high school graduations. I mean — a lot of track meets, when you’re there, it’s just another track meet. It’s how it plays off and how you get recognized.”

Both brothers are really looking forward to the party after the graduation ceremony.

“Originally we thought with the times we were going to be able to do (both) because usually the state meet starts at noon (but since it’s 5 p.m. this year) you can only pick one,” Rob said. “And the Silver Grad Night (event put on by the school) . . . it’s an all night deal. You stay up all night and we would do that. We thought about it and how it would play out if we go to state. We would hope to qualify and if we do, go back home and stay up all night and then at 5 a.m. we would drive from (Rocklin) to Fresno. Then sleep for three hours and pole vault for the finals. If I am already giving up graduation (in that scenario) and I’m not going to place anyway (because of the lack of sleep) then why do it?”

Michael Woepse of Mater Dei of Santa Ana is the state leader in the pole vault (16-9) and the only person ranked above Rob and Cale.

“I think I probably could have been (state champion) but that depends on how (Woepse) did,” Rob said. “Me or my brother, we could have placed in the top 3. No problem.”

Despite this, Rob says he won’t have regrets on Friday.

“We kind of came down to it — we have been to so many track meets and we’ve both been to state before,” Rob said. “It will be a little sad that we won’t have the chance to have the ability to win state but at the same time we don’t know if we could also sit there and be thinking about ‘I just missed my own graduation.’ It’s a chance to see all of them (Rocklin seniors) for a last time before they go on and live their life.”

Cale just hopes the weather holds up on Friday.

“The only regret I think I’ll have is if we get rained out of our graduation and they push it to Saturday — then I might be kind of angry,” said Cale with a laugh. “But I won’t care too much (about state while at graduation Friday). I’ll probably be so into the moment that I won’t think about it at all.”

Both Rob and Cale have GPAs of over 4.0 and will pole vault in college at the Air Force Academy. They will participate in a “just for fun” meet at Woodcreek High Thursday.

“It’s nice to be done with track (for now), there is so much more stuff to do,” Cale said. “It’s nice to relax and enjoy senior activities.”

[TheBlueShadow]

I talked with the Simmons coach about this and he pointed out that the twins were very comfortable with their decision. They had competed at the state meet before.

Still .... It would have been a bad-ass competition between them and Michael Woepse at the 16' level.

Here are the final results:

Boys Pole Vault
# Name Year School Finals
1 Woepse, Michael 11 Mater Dei ss 16-05.00
2 Peterson, Mike Clvs East ce 15-11.00
3 Starr, Mike 12 Folsom sj 15-11.00
4 Ballew, Kyle 12 El!Camn R la 15-11.00
5 Cunnington, Cody 12 Drake Nc 15-11.00
6 Prader, John 12 Salinas cc 15-05.00
7 Cooper, Matt 12 Mater!Dei ss 14-11.00
7 Mcnanny, Sean 12 M.Viejo ss 14-11.00
9 Toney, Shawn 11 St. Francis.(mou 14-11.00
10 Bet, Chris 12 J Serra cc 14-11.00
11 Turner, Dane 12 Sutter no 14-11.00