Sam Ewing Owns Second-Best Jump In Nation (AR)

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http://www.arkansasbusiness.com/sports_ ... 599.126585


Lake Hamilton Pole Vaulter Owns Second-Best Jump In Nation
by Philip Seaton

Arkansas Vault Club
Lake Hamilton’s Sam Ewing, shown in here in training at the Arkansas Vault Club, is chasing after the state pole vault record.
Sam Ewing looks up to former Bryant High and current University of Arkansas pole vaulter Spencer McCorkel.

Ewing even considers him a friend, but the junior from Lake Hamilton High School is gunning for one thing McCorkel owns: the state pole-vaulting record.

McCorkel holds the state record of 16-feet, 8-inches that he set on May 17, 2006, at the Class AAAAA state meet at Cabot.

The mark McCorkel broke stood for 17 years - held by Morry Sanders, a former Lake Hamilton pole vaulter and current Wolves assistant coach.

"My goal is to get 17 feet and bring the record back to Lake Hamilton," said Ewing.

Ewing and McCorkel became friends after training together at Sanders' Arkansas Vault Club in Black Springs, about a 40-minute drive from Lake Hamilton.

"He's an amazing vaulter, one of the most amazing that I have been around," Ewing said of his friend McCorkel. "I think that every pole vaulter has his own role model and he is mine."

Ewing, who has a season's best vault of 17 feet (the second-best jump nationally so far this season), won the state indoor title and is going hard after the state overall record, which can only be set at the state track meet or Meet of Champions. Ewing has an outdoor best jump of 16 feet at the McDonald's Relays in Fort Smith on April 26.

He got his pole vaulting start in the sixth grade (where he had a best jump of 8-6) and, despite sitting out his seventh-grade year, came back and jumped 12-2 as an eighth-grader.

Ewing recently discussed why, with any sport at his disposal in his developing years, he chose pole vaulting.

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe because it's your own sport. It's all you. You don't have to rely on anybody else. That's why I like it."

Soaring to such heights, and knowing that what goes up must come down somewhere, would cause most people to think twice about taking up the sport. But Ewing says that does not enter his mind.

"I know it's always a possibility but if I do everything right the chances are pretty slim [of being injured]," he said. "I think pole vaulting is the hardest sport in the world. I've played every sport and pole vaulting is by far the hardest. You have to have no fear and you can't be scared. You are trusting your coach that he is teaching us right."

Ewing's coach can definitely relate. Sanders, who graduated from Lake Hamilton in 1988 and vaulted in the renowned Arkansas State pole vaulting program established by Olympian Earl Bell and coach Guy Kochel, speaks passionately about the sport.

"It's something about the challenge and having the bar up there," he said. "I never sky-dived out of plane but I guess I'm prepared for something like that. The higher you get, the better it feels. Anytime you jump a bar you haven't cleared before, it's a feeling of accomplishment, especially if you jump really high. It takes a lot of little things coming together. You try to eventually get to where all those little things get together at the right time.

"When you look back at it you think, ‘That's pretty dadgum hard and there's not a lot of people that can jump what I just jumped.' "

Ewing, who has two cousins vaulting at the college level and is already drawing interest from colleges, wants to attend Arkansas to keep vaulting and keep "that rush"

"When you go up over the bar, you just know," he said. "When you make it, there is nothing better. It's really an amazing sport."