Brian McGinty Article (MO)

[rainbowgirl28]

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/neighb ... te%20crown

Athlete of the Week: McGinty soars to state crown
Brett Auten
Of the Suburban Journals
Chesterfield Journal

Chaminade junior Brian McGinty earned the Class 4 state pole vault championship.
(Rick Graefe photo/Suburban Journals)



Brian McGinty has soared to new heights.

At the Missouri State High School Activities Association Class 4 Track and Field Championships held May 26-27 at Dwight T. Reed Stadium in Jefferson City, the Chaminade junior won the pole vault on the meet's first day of competition.

Though it wasn't the highest mark of his brief career, McGinty, of Chesterfield, cleared 14-feet, nine inches and ended up with less misses than Truman's Ryan Hayes to earn the gold medal. McGinty, the Journal Athlete of the Week, was the only underclassmen to finish in the top four of the event.

The 5-foot-11, 17-year-old had plenty of confidence built up going into state and reasonably so.

Just six days before at Chaminade, he won the Class 4 Sectional 2 championship and set a new school record by clearing 15-5, two and a half feet higher than the nearest competitor.

"After that, I felt pretty sure that I would finish near the top," McGinty said. "The next highest coming in was around 14-7."

But more so than any opponent, Mother Nature proved more pesky, an annoying thorn in the side, as she dropped just enough rain in sporadic moments to make things tough.

"Brian had a couple of misses and I think the weather was a huge factor," Chaminade coach Jim Chrismer said. "He had gotten up of 16 during the week of practice and probably could have hit it at the state meet."

The unfriendly weather caused the pole vault competition to stretch out to over three hours before it was completed.

"It was horrible," McGinty said. "Whenever it would stop, we would start up again."

A former football player, the 5-foot-11, 160-pound McGinty fell face first into vaulting in the spring of his sophomore year.

"My coaches saw that my long jump was pretty good so they sent me over here. Plus, I wasn't good at anything else," he said. "That was probably a big part."

What Chrismer and assistant coach Scott Werner saw in McGinty was an uncommon concoction of speed, strength, and athletic ability, but also a large amount of, for lack of a better term, intestinal fortitude. It's an asset much needed when asked to run as fast as you can for 45-feet or so, then cram an awkward graphite pole into a plant box, leap as high as you can, swing yourself over the bar and land safely on, of all places, your back.

And hopefully the pole won't shatter during all of this.

"I've only broken one pole and it was my coaches and I just screwing around. I guess it had a chip in it or something," McGinty said. "I didn't even know that I broke it until I got down."

The reason why McGinty hasn't spilt too many poles in two is because of his weapon of choice. He always selects a pole that is suited for a 170- or 180-pound person, while McGinty is a slight 155.

"The heavier the pole, the higher you can go," he said. "It just shoots you into the air."

As a sophomore, McGinty finished his first season as a serious pole-vaulter with a wallop, finishing second at Jefferson City with a height of 14-3.

"Going into state, I had only cleared 13-feet, but for some reason when I got up there I jumped my PR over a foot," he said.

McGinty would follow that summer with his first-ever jump over 15-feet in Junior Olympic competition.

Along with more Junior Olympics, McGinty will spend most of the summer and early part of the fall jumping up and down from varying degrees of height.

Plyometrics, a form of exercise in which athletes leap from the ground onto a tall box and then back to the ground over and over, has proven to improve and athletes' explosiveness and is a must, McGinty says, for pole vaulters. He also hopes to attend an indoor training camp over the winter.

But along with the long hours of off-season and in-season training and all the extra focus on the minute details of form, there may be another secret to being a state champion pole vaulter and it can be found in slender silver and blue cans.

"I have a Red Bull before every meet. Sometimes three," McGinty said. "At state, I had four or five."

Now that will ‘give you wings'... enough to clear 14-9.