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Exhibition will kick off relays


By The Porterville Recorder staff


Greg Miller, meet director for the Coca-Cola Modesto Relays, announced a Street Pole-vault Exhibition to kick off the relays on May 8.

The Pre-Meet event will be May 6, from 5 to 7:30 p.m. at Modesto 10th Street Pla., on 10th Street, between J and K streets in downtown Modesto.

Olympic champions Tim Lobinger, Derek Miles, Jeff Hartwig and "The Vault Girls" from the members of the USA and Canadian Olympic team are just a few of the athletes that will compete for cash prizes and sign autographs at this kick-off exhibition to promote the 63rd Annual Coca-Cola Modesto Relays.

Don Bean, event coordinator, said: "There is something for the whole family at the Modesto Street Scene and BBQ, including a championship BBQ contest, great food, games and activities for kids from 6 to 60, and a world famous track and field meet."

The Modesto Street Scene and BBQ featuring the 63rd Annual Coca-Cola Modesto Relays will be at Modesto Junior College Stadium, in Modesto, on May 8, following a May 7 Bryan Adams concert at John Truman Field.

http://www.modbee.com/sports/story/8528 ... 6985c.html

Pole vault party coming to 10th St.

By TOM HOLLIDAY
BEE STAFF WRITER


Last Updated: May 5, 2004, 07:47:38 AM PDT


There was music, food and drink, fog machines and, oh, yes, an endless supply of pole vaulters. High School, College, Masters, Open, Elite ...
It was the 2004 Reno Pole Vault Summit, held Jan. 9-10 in the Reno Hilton Ballroom.

"I looked around and there were 3,000 people," says Modesto Relays meet director Gregg Miller. "It was sold out. I thought, 'We got to figure out a way to do this. This is fun.'"

His solution: Reno without a roof. The first Modesto Street Pole Vault will take place Thursday night beginning with the women at 5 p.m. at Modesto's 10th Street Place. The men's competition follows the women's and should wrap up around 7:15 p.m.

They're getting the runway from Fresno State coach Bob Fraley's North American Pole Vault Association, the pit from Cal State Stanislaus. Jumpers will run south, with the pit set up toward the south end of Brenden Theatres. Admission is free.

The Street Vault is not to be confused with the Modesto Relays men's and women's pole vault events two days later at Modesto JC Stadium.

Miller says of Reno's Summit, "It's as much a show production as it is a competition, and that's the atmosphere we want."

Saturday's Relays will feature superb vault lineups, men's and women's, as strong as any meet short of the Olympic Trials.

The Street Vault? It'll have many of those same people, but most of them will be signing autographs and chatting with folks and saving their competitive energy for Saturday.

Still, high is high. Rocky Danners has gone over 18 feet and Canadian national women's champ Kelsie Hendry 14-9½. Watching athletes like that trying to jump over the moon on 10th Street for the $500 prize should be a lot of fun.

There will be music during and between jumps, and downtown restaurants will be open.

Modesto won't have the crisscrossing runways that give the Reno vault a dash of a demolition derby feel.

It will have the Vault Girls of Vault Girls calendar fame, signing autographs and selling calendars. Kellie Suttle, Mary Sauer ...

Year in and year out at the Relays, the vaulters are among the top attractions.

They wave, they clap, they might even do cartwheels, and they get the crowd involved. The guys put on a terrific show. The women might be even better. The fans love them.

Seven months pregnant, Mueller (also a Vault Girl), has given Miller some ideas about the street vault.

What does Mueller say?

"Keep the field small, and keep the action moving," says Miller.

Mueller knows about street vaults. In 2001 she became the third-highest female vaulter of all time when she cleared 15-1¾ on her first attempt at the Clovis street vault, created by Fraley (he did Reno, too) in 1995.

In 2001 The Fresno Bee reported Mueller "disappearing under a dogpile of kids in the makeshift pit at Pollasky Avenue and Fourth Street." A crowd reported between 5,000 and 7,000 looked on, many fresh from a Farmer's Market.

Sonora High grad Tye Harvey, who'll be on hand Thursday and will compete in the invitational Saturday, says that in Europe most of his competitions are street meets or festival jumps. Such as Cologne, Germany, where the vault site is an incredible church with two towering spires that somehow survived an intense bombing in World War II.

"Pole vaulting under one of the most inspirational buildings ever constructed -- it makes your 19-foot jump pretty minuscule," he says.

"And these street meets are so much fun. They bring out the essence of the pole vault ... about having a good time. (At the Cologne meet, the athletes made a deal that anyone who no-heighted had to strip down to a leather G-string for a fourth jump).

"People surround the runway in Germany, with beer, get really loud, clap, the music is blaring, and you're raised one meter above the ground on this runway that you share with 12 or 15 other athletes.

"It's the athletes and an ocean of fans -- quite a spectacle. For a pole vaulter, I don't know that you can find any more energy in a venue. For a fan, it's hard to find the interaction with an athlete that you can find in a street meet."

That's the kind of atmosphere Miller hopes to see.

"I think for a lot of people who have never seen a pole vault, it's going to be pretty exciting," says Miller. "I think we're going to make a lot of track fans."

There's a couple pictures on the newspaper website

http://www.modbee.com/local/story/85379 ... 6454c.html

Wind can't stop Street Vault


By TOM HOLLIDAY
BEE STAFF WRITER
Last Updated: May 7, 2004, 06:15:28 AM PDT



Scott Slover said of the Modesto Street Vault, "If I could do 20 of these a year, that's all I'd do."

And that was after the Los Gatos pole vaulter tangled with about the nastiest head wind he's ever jumped in.

Slover won the men's competition with what was for him a very modest leap of 17 feet Thursday night at Modesto's Tenth Street Place. Kelsie Hendry of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, was the women's winner at 13-6. First prize was $500.

Slover, who missed three tries at 18 feet, one-half inch, said: "It's competition, but it's fun. It's just fun. The energy of the crowd makes it easier to jump high."

The crowd peaked at maybe 300. That's fewer than organizers hoped for when they planned the prelude to Saturday's 63rd Modesto Relays at MJC Stadium.

Some fans are serious

Some were serious fans, like Chad Carlson of Turlock. He and his wife, Yvonne, were there with their two-seat stroller carrying daughter Kyla and son Caden. The former University of Nebraska vaulter, a veteran of the Fourth of July street vault in Seward, Neb., gave Modesto's debut a thumbsup.

Others, like Hector and Rebecca Garcia of Ceres, were just passing by -- they were on their way to the Brenden Theatres to see "Godsend." They asked how high the bar was set, and how old a bald vaulter was.

A lot of folks probably didn't care how high the bar was. They just wanted to watch people go over it. Slover was one of those who did care, and he was clearly disappointed that Mother Nature threw him a curve.

The vaulters ran toward Brenden Theatres, Jamba Juice and Starbucks at Tenth Street Place.

When the women's competition started at about 5:15, there was a brisk tail wind that vaulters like, only occasionally gusting a bit too much and making the Señor Fresh menu sign dangerously tipsy.

Later, the wind almost died, reduced to a very gentle breeze. And then ...

"All of a sudden, right before I jumped at 17 feet, it switched," Slover said. "A 15 mile-per-hour head wind."

He shrugged it off, took his $500 and was looking forward to jumping Saturday. He said he's ready to go 18-8 or 18-10.

If the crowd was smaller than hoped for, at least it was world-class. Jeff Hartwig and Sonora's Tye Harvey were among the male elite on hand, and the Vault Girls (15-footers Mel Mueller, Kellie Suttle, Mary Sauer, etc.) brought smiles and calendars to sell.

Vault Girls to jump Saturday

Except for Mueller, who's seven months pregnant, they'll jump Saturday at the Relays. Thursday night, they mingled with fans and cheered the athletes on.

At one point, Harvey asked the coach of Adrianne Vangool, also from Saskatoon, "Can I tell her one thing?" Sure, said Rick Petrucha, who along with his wife, Susanne, coaches the vaulters at the University of Saskatchewan.

"I just told her to lower her grip a little bit and run through her jump," Harvey said later. "She was putting on the brakes."

Vangool, Canada's top junior vaulter, cleared the bar on her next jump and wound up second at 12-6.

Petrucha, whose vaulters also will compete Saturday, can talk about weather. Saskatchewan is north of Montana, and just about the time his women started jumping, he figured that in Saskatoon it was 40 to 45 degrees with a cold wind.

The next time Tenth Street Place gets a head wind that strong, it probably will be the spring day it's 80 degrees in Saskatoon.

Modesto Relays organizer Gregg Miller said there will definitely be another street vault before next year's meet. He said he's thinking about also having one this fall, after the Olympic Games, with some of vaulting's elite.

Because, as so many said Thursday, it's just fun.

Bee staff writer Tom Holliday can be reached at tholliday@modbee.com.

rainbowgirl28 wrote:The crowd peaked at maybe 300. That's fewer than organizers hoped for when they planned the prelude to Saturday's 63rd Modesto Relays at MJC Stadium.

A crowd of 300 is not bad for a first year event like that. I think the newspaper reporter would have been less disappointed if he hadn't heard figures of 3000 for Reno and 5000-7000 for Clovis.

I can't speak for past Clovis vaults, but I doubt there were 5000 people at the whole street fair, let alone watching the pole vault competition.

Not to take anything away from either event. A crowd of a couple hundred is a pretty decent crowd to watch a street vault

The short notice didn't help. I only heard about it two weeks ago. If Daniel and Bubba had made it into Oakland's airport earlier (they arrived at something like 5:00) and been able to get to Modesto earler, I might have made the drive down to hang out. Expect a crowd of over 1,000 next year, now that people know this is going to happen.