http://www.c-n.com/news/c-n/story/0,2111,943491,00.html
Track & field notebook
By JERRY CARINO
Staff Writer
Published in the Courier News on April 13, 2004
Bridgewater-Raritan High School, once the mecca of New Jersey pole vaulting, will not offer the event for the second straight spring.
The school's $10,000 pits, ordered in the fall of 2002 to conform to increased safety regulations, failed to inflate properly because they were not unwrapped right away after delivery. The Panthers forfeited all their points in the pole vault last spring and will do so again.
"We're not budgeted to go out and get new ones right away, and with the liability involved, if anything happens an attorney's going to have a field day," boys track coach Al Rossi said. "I don't know if it would be unsafe, but I don't want to find out the hard way."
These are conflicted times for the pole vault. It's blossoming at schools such as Hunterdon Central and Hillsborough, where girls have flocked to the event. But in many places, including several Middlesex County schools, it's disappearing because of the cost of buying safety-conforming pits and having a specialized coach supervise practices.
"Technically, when a kid jumps, you have to have a coach standing there the whole time," Rossi said. "We lost a coach a couple of years ago due to (budget) cutbacks."
In the old days, the juniors and seniors taught the younger kids how to vault. Bridgewater-Raritan East had the luxury of a volunteer coach, Paul Richard, who tutored Bill Lange and Eric Richard, who came to be known as the Flying Circus. Lange cleared 16 feet, 6 inches in 1980, still the state record. Eric Richard went 16-1 in 1981 and captured the gold medal at the Golden West Invitational.
Today, as Bridgewater-Raritan co-head coach Gus Duryea notes, Richard wouldn't be allowed even to volunteer because he did not have 60 college credits.
"It's become so much more complicated from when Bill and Ricky were vaulting," said Duryea, who was the head coach on those Bridgewater East squads. "We're living in an age of liability."
Does that mean the death of the pole vault at Bridgewater-Raritan?
"I don't know if it's done. I don't know if I want to say that," Duryea said. "We'll just have to take it year to year and see what happens. Maybe it's just a temporary setback. I don't want to see it become extinct."
