Joe Davis article (FL)

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http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs. ... 60632/1006

Bent on success
By DOUG FERNANDES
doug.fernandes@heraldtribune.com
SARASOTA - The routine has become routine for Joe Davis.

Area high school pole vaulters know it, through the repetitive battle, meet after meet, for every spot except first.

The bar is set to a specified starting height, say, 10 feet.

As it's raised, competitors fall, unable to propel their bodies over the sport's distinction between success and failure, until one individual remains. The potentate of the pole. The virtuoso of the vault. Riverview High junior Joe Davis.

A common name, performing with uncommon skill.

"He's head and shoulders above everybody else right now,'' said Guy Amuso, Riverview's pole-vaulting coach since 1981. "A real class act. A real student of the vault.''

The best you've ever had, coach?

"Oh, yeah,'' Amuso said. "And I've had some good ones.''

At a meet in Clearwater last month, Davis cleared 15-7, setting a Ram record. Two days later, at the Bob Hayes Invitational in Jacksonville, he cleared 15-3.

The vault earned him first, a familiar place for Davis this season.

He's finished nowhere else, often outdistancing his competitors by 2 feet or more.

"When I warm up,'' said Davis, "I almost feel that no one knows who I am because I'm just there. But once we start going, I think it kinda changes their focus.''

"I don't think it's an 'I'm better than them,''' said Bob Davis, his father. It's a 'How high and how good can I get?'

"And winning the competition is all the better. He thrives on the competition.''

Joe Davis, who has a 3.7 GPA at Riverview and serves as a deacon at First Presbyterian Church, has a good grasp of the numbers away from the classroom.

One of his goals this season was to vault consistently higher than 14 feet. He's been the very definition of the word. Not once has Davis vaulted under 14 feet.

His next goal? The state record, 15-9. Two inches more than Davis' Ram record.

"And I expect him to break the state record at the state meet,'' said Amuso. Last season, Davis finished second in the state.

If one name in pole-vaulting has resonated over the years, it's Sergei Bubka, whose jump of 20-13/4 in 1994 remains the world record.

"I think potentially,'' said Amuso, "(Davis) is somewhere around an 18-foot vaulter.''

As with any vaulter, the key for Davis is a controlled run down the approach -- "when you're running full tilt, it's really hard to jump'' -- followed by a powerful plant of the pole.

"The plant is the jump and getting your hands up to push the pole away,'' Davis said. "If you don't have the speed to carry the tip of your pole into the pit and bend your pole, before you even leave the ground, you're destined not to jump that high."

From that day as a freshman, when he walked to the Rams' jumping pit and asked Amuso if he could try, Bob Davis said his son has been a natural.

"At the beginning, I didn't know anything,'' said Joe. "So basically anything the coach said, I was like, 'OK, I'll try and do that.' I guess I have decent control of my body, to be able to do what he told me.''

By the third day, Joe was vaulting 9 feet.

"He picked it up pretty quickly,'' said Amuso. "He didn't have a fear of getting off the ground.

"He does flips off the end of the pole and he's very entertaining. And that red hair really goes with it.''

Winning the state meet is Davis' immediate goal. But he won't stop trying to set his individual bar higher and higher.

"I have a total blast,'' he said. "It's the best sport that track and field ever came up with.

"You always dream about the Olympics. I'll keep doing it as long as I'm having fun doing it. I will go as far as it takes me.

"And I'll work as hard as it takes to jump as high as I'm physically able to.''

Right now, that's higher than any high-schooler around.