Who's gonna fly high next year?

[SkyHigh21]

Yes I am hoping to jump high next year but i am not settign goals in hight, my goal is to jump to the best of my ability every meet and practice. Hopefully that will help.

P.S. It dosnt matter if Tommy is putting on muscle, he weighs more than jeff hartwig now and he is not that fast, hes already taking 9 lefts. Thats too many steps for the height hes going. But hey, if he does it and jumps a national record good for him. All i know is that i will never put the bar at 18, its not right, too high too early. Anyone remember Jacob Davis? Really good, really young, where is he now? Quit, and coaching. Eric Eschbach? 18'2 3/4" not even an inch improvement. Its a curse, im sure of it.

[lonpvh]

Carefull what you say Chip. You know your gonna jump over 5.20 this year. You don't want to be one of those ones that gets too good too early. I kind of agree with you, it almost a kiss of death. Lon

PS. You are my number 1 favorate to jump really high this year. Keep it up.

[wacky274]

lon, just out of curiousity, who are you? lol.....seems to me that neithe of you are huge skipper fans....well, in the sense that he wont jump much higher, at least any time soon...i'm gonna have to say i agree...it's always seemed to me that these people are just people who peak earlier then most vaulters....(not to take anything away from tommy, just saying)....but i mean, if you look at the age most elite vaulters are, and how high they jumped in the past, it doesnt match up with these huge highschool vaulters.....hope that makes sense, lol

[rainbowgirl28]

*shrug* I dunno... I have seen Tommy jump since he was a freshman. He still has a lot left in him. He's a good kid and Rick is a good coach. We'll see what happens!!

[lonpvh]

Can't speak of Skipper. Never saw him jump. I was speaking of the track records of being really good really early. I'll give you two that are success stories with good careers.

Pat Manson and Greg Duplantis. Both jumped 18 out of high school and had great long careers. Well, Greg jumped 17 11 3/4

[zack]

I'm not sure about Skipper not having any speed. He did run 10.83 FAT in the state final along with competing in 3 other events.

[dubjones]

I don't know about tommy. I have seen him jump several times at Willamette striders with Rick, and the kid is a really great athlete. What should be a benefit to him is that is really isn't much of a pole vaulter yet, with a lot of room for improvement on the technical side. He has a great attitude, along with a great work ethic. I love the kid. He isn't much of a kid though. He is a full grown man at this point. I don't expect him to get much better naturally like other HS kids will this year. He simply dosen't have much more physical mature-ing left to do. As a pole vaulter he still has a ways to go, so who knows what he might do. Physically I belive he is capable of breaking the HS record, and has been for a while, but there is more to it than just physical abiltiy. I would expect for progress to come much slower for him than it has in the past. The inches get a lot bigger the higher off the ground they get. 17'7" to 18'3" is an 8" PR, which is a really good season for most people.
Personally I would love to see Tommy in the Decat. I rember Rick sending me some of his times and distances and that they were really respectable. I think he would be stronger over 10 events than he currently is in the polevault.
Either way, Good luck Tommy.

[rainbowgirl28]

I think Tommy can get those 8 inches on technique alone. His technique is decent of course... but so much potential remaining. And he really did have the height for 18'3" last summer.

So we'll see!

[Robert schmitt]

I agree with both of you dub and becca I've only seen him jump once. and there is alot of room for him to improve on the tech side.

[wacky274]

yeah, i've seen him once, it was his freshman year....i remember i wasnt impressed cause he was capping off a 16 foot pole and jumped 15' 6"...he just didnt have that great of technique then, but that was a couple years ago, so i dont know how it is now, but from the pictures i've seen, he's a beast physically, but i can't judge his technique now

[vaultman02]

About the whole Skipper debate. He's a great athlete, no doubt about that. But I'm gonna have to go with Chip on this one. The guy is getting TOO big. Unless something miraculous happens, I don't think the record is in too much jeopardy right now. Those pics that were posted of him earlier were from the Junior National Meet this past summer. I was jumping there and Skipper never jumped at 18'3". That was actually somewhere around 18'0 1/2 - 18'03/4 (5.52 I believe) I remember this because i was wondering why he didn't bump it on up and try for the record. And from the angle that I was at, he never had the height on any of his three attempts. None of them were 18 foot vaults. He's just not ready to jump that high in my opinion. I'm not saying it's not gonna happen, but I do believe that some very drastic changes are going to have to be made in his vault if he is going to have a chance at it.

[rainbowgirl28]

Those pics that were posted of him earlier were from the Junior National Meet this past summer. I was jumping there and Skipper never jumped at 18'3". That was actually somewhere around 18'0 1/2 - 18'03/4 (5.52 I believe)

*ahem*

As I stated earlier, I took those pictures y'all are talking about. Skipper in yellow clearing 17-7.5 and almost clearing 18-3. I believe they are still posted on the USATF-Oregon site, and when school stops kicking my butt I will post them here. I took them at the WA-OR Meet at the beginning of the summer. Zack was there with me and can vouch for that!

You must have gotten confused... here... these are the ones I am talking about http://www.usatf-oregon.org/pictures/index.htm