San Benito pole vaulters take program above the competition
Standing on the runway with pole in hand, you hear the slow clap of the crowd begin. You try to block out the noise as it grows louder, but the adrenaline is pumping through your veins.
In front of you stands a support with a bar that lies high off the ground. An impossible height.
As you rock back and forth in your ready position, you steel yourself.
‘I can do this. I can do this,’ you tell yourself.
As you begin to stride forward and quickly reach full speed, you are so focused that you are in a daze. Seconds later, you plant and begin to soar into the air. Higher and higher you spring. Up and up, and then you begin to clear the bar.
As you contort your body at the pinnacle, you are on top of the world. This is your nirvana.
You are a pole vaulter.
THE DRAW
The San Benito pole vaulting team occupies rarefied air. Consistently among the top performers in the Central Coast Section, the Haybalers look like naturals as they soar above the bar and their competition.
But it didn’t start out that way. As recently as five years ago, the program was in disarray. 30 athletes joking around in the pit, making half-hearted attempts on the runway. Essentially, a glorified social hour.
One coaching change and a few determined athletes later, San Benito now ranks with powerful St. Francis as a program that churns out top-notch vaulters in both the boys and girls ranks.
Not that it was that easy. Once coach Julio Trinidad was installed at the helm of the program, he began looking for that unique type of athlete that had the talent, focus and drive to attack the vault.
“Out there, you probably need the best athlete you can find,” said Trinidad, a San Benito alum who also vaulted at Chico State. “This is the one event of track and field that packs all the elements into one. It’s for the select few. It takes a special kind of athlete and the desire to make the vault work.”
The bulk of San Benito’s vaulters spoke of being drawn to the event largely because it is unique.
“I like it because it’s so different from everything else you try,” said ‘Balers senior Ashley Patton. “It’s not like you can just go out and pole vault like you can shoot a basketball. It’s kind of just a rush to do something different.”
After implementing a rigorous training program, much of it away from the vault itself, Trinidad began to attract the type of competitors he was looking for. While talented athletes such as Todd Merrigan and Josh Schroder sought out the event in their freshman seasons, the San Benito coach added to the team’s ranks with solid recruiting, too.
This spring, junior Carly Brigantino and sophomore Ashlyn Gonzales decided to turn out for the track team once the soccer season ended. The best friends had designs on running the sprints and possibly the hurdles in an effort to stay in shape for soccer, but were approached by Trinidad on Day No. 1.
“‘You guys look like vaulters,'” Trinidad told Brigantino and Gonzales.
The two looked at each other and just laughed.
“‘What!? We’re just gonna make fools of ourselves,'” Brigantino said. “It was just a shock. ‘Oh, are you joking around?'”
But after a few workouts on the grass and on the training bars, the girls attempted a 6-0 attempt in practice and quickly found that they were hooked. Not even two months later, Gonzales cleared 8-0 in a dual meet with North Salinas and budding star Brigantino topped 9-6, good for sixth place, in the CCS Top Eight meet last Friday.
“It’s very addicting, actually,” Gonzales shared. “You’re always wanting to be out here. It’s getting dark out here and we don’t want to close the pit.
“I love this maybe even more than soccer now.”
THE VAULT
Like any sport performed at a high level, watching a perfectly-executed pole vault is astounding. The combination of power and grace, along with its fearless nature, makes the vault an awe-inspiring event.
Surveying the scene on their first day at track practice, even Brigantino and Gonzales couldn’t help but marvel at how effortless Merrigan, Schroder and the others made the vault look.
“We were just like, ‘How do they do that? It looks so easy,'” Brigantino remembered.
As San Benito’s newest vaulters would soon find out, a flawless vault was the result of hours of training, the grunt work before the glory.
“We started doing drills on the grass. It was hard work and it was really frustrating,” Gonzales related. “Bar work, weight room, drills, stairs … . Pole vaulters have the hardest workouts.”
Often the first to begin practice and the last to leave, pole vaulters have a unique role on the track team. Trinidad said the pole vault is special because it combines the attributes of all the other events.
“Sprinters are just vaulters who are scared of heights,” Trinidad related. “Jumpers just don’t pack a pole. And we pack as much power as the throwers.”
Once a vaulter sets foot on the runway, the intricacy of movements come together in a complex sequence.
Merrigan, the San Benito record holder at 15-3, detailed the steps.
“The first three steps are long and powerful,” Merrigan explained. “The second three steps are fast and quick. With the last step, you have the pole over your head … . I guess there is a lot of stuff you have to worry about.
“You’re running so hard and so fast that you can’t see straight. It’s just blurry.”
But once he flies through the air, Merrigan said time nearly comes to a stop.
“When you’re going through the air, everything slows down,” said Merrigan, who cleared 16-0 in the Clovis Street Vault last summer and hopes to match that mark before the end of this season. “It’s like it’s in slow motion. It’s just a rush.”
THE TEAM
Split apart from the rest of the track team for much of the time, pole vaulters develop an uncanny bond.
Josh Liem, a San Benito junior whose PR is 13-0, said vaulters are drawn together because they share the event’s unique nature.
“It’s the mindset of wanting to do something different that brings (vaulters) together,” Liem said. “It’s just the atmosphere I like. You don’t really get that in any other sport. And the family that comes to vault … it’s like a brother and sistership.
Sitting alongside Liem after a recent practice, Schroder agreed with his teammate.
“Pole vaulters are just a really tight group,” Schroder stated. “We just make jokes. We’re always watching each other, giving each other advice … and that advice doesn’t stop at the pole vault.
“We’ll talk about pole vault here, but we’ll talk about school life with each other. Everyone knows about everyone and what they’re going through.”
As not one of the San Benito vaulters competed in the event before entering high school, Patton said the teammates lean on each other for encouragement and tips.
“It’s kind of a learning experience for all of us,” said Patton, whose PR of 8-6 ranks her second behind Brigantino among the Lady ‘Balers. “When one person learns something, the others do, too.”
Brigantino and Gonzales laughed about the fine line between bolstering a teammate’s confidence and saying a bit too much.
“Another thing that makes me push hard is her,” said Brigantino, gesturing to Gonzales. “We just push each other. ‘I know you can do it. Just DO it!’ And she’s like, ‘You’re pissing me off!'”
THE MENTOR
The backbone of the program is content to talk pole vaulting for hours. Trinidad, the former ‘Baler who took over as pole vault coach in 2002, beams when he speaks of how far the vaulters have come in his tenure.
After competing at Hartnell and later at Chico State, Trinidad saw his professional vaulting dreams vanish when injured his left knee on the runway. A bitter period ensued, a time in which he wanted nothing to do with the sport that broke his heart.
But after accepting the position at San Benito, Trinidad set out to build a program that would shortly become one of the section’s best.
In addition to their success in the vault, the ‘Balers have also built a tight-knit team that is in no small part due to the big-brother relationship they enjoy with their coach. Trinidad’s athletes swear by him, crediting him with much of their success on the runway and off.
“He’s seriously an awesome coach,” Brigantino said. “He’s helped me so much and made me an all-around stronger person. He always has a positive outlook. He always pushes me to do better.”
Patton added, “What made me stay was the coach, of course.”
After once clearing 16-0 in a summertime meet at Chico State, Trinidad is now forced to live life much closer to the ground. Even so, the San Benito coach will occasionally take a stab at the vault, to the delight of his athletes.
“Sometimes his knees and shins hurt, so he can’t really do anything,” Merrigan laughed. “It’s pretty funny to watch.”
After seeing his perspective on pole vaulting change so drastically – he blew out his knee just a week after setting his PR – Trinidad said his thrill is now in enjoying the event through the ‘Balers.
“I’m living through them,” Trinidad related. “Watching Todd go up there and just demolish heights, them vaulting, it makes my eyes light up. Watching Schroder make PR after PR, and not to mention Carly … .
“These guys are addicts now. They call me on weekends and all summer. If I can get any of these guys into college just by booming heights, my mission’s complete. If that’s the way I can give back, that’s what I do.”
THE COMPETITION
Despite the improbable rise of San Benito’s pole vaulting program, Trinidad and his athletes bemoan the fact that there will come a time in the near future when they simply won’t be able to compete with the big boys.
With San Benito identifying St. Francis as its chief competition in the Central Coast Section, the ‘Balers cite the need for new poles, in particular, to be able to maintain pace with the talented Lancers.
“A lot of the stuff we have is either borrowed, traded for, or we just make do with what we have,” Trinidad said. “That’s why we’re not at the St. Francis level. We’re just as good. We’re just as talented. We just don’t have the stuff to match up with them.”
While the public school–private school divide in California is well-documented in many sports, pole vaulting is an event that requires poles of exact sizes depending on a vaulter’s weight to ensure success. San Benito athletes use some poles from King City, equipment set to be returned after this season, and the Lady ‘Balers are missing many of the poles that Brigantino and Co. will need to attain the heights they are fast approaching.
Meanwhile, Trinidad casts an envious eye north, where, in addition to the plethora of elite coaches that aid the Lancers, St. Francis heads to the impeccable training center at Los Gatos.
“You walk into that shed in Los Gatos and there’s not a pole they don’t have. There’s not a piece of equipment they don’t have,” Trinidad said. “That’s kind of like a vaulter’s dream–a vaulter’s heaven.”
Schroder chimed in: “We look at St. Francis, and they have money and everything. We have a torn-up runway … . We’re always at a disadvantage, but we work with what we’ve got.”
While the ‘Balers and Lancers enjoy a camaraderie built on years of competing in the same elite-level meets, the goodwill only goes so far.
“When it’s a big meet and it’s coming down to first and second,” Trinidad said, “it’s not like you can say, ‘Hey, mind if I jump on this?’ Because that’s not going to happen.”
THE DRIVE
A large part of the addiction of the pole vault is the constant drive to topple greater heights. No mark is good enough and no record should be safe.
Just days after setting a new PR, Brigantino was adamant in her determination to make 9-6 just a temporary stop in the road.
“I know I push myself harder and harder,” the junior said. “If I get 9-0, I want to get 9-6. If I get 9-6, I just want 10-0. Just push myself every bit. I just want to get better and better and better. And I’ll work for it. I want to get 11-0. I’m gonna shoot for 11-0.”
Schroder, who owns a PR of 14-6 and has designs on joining Merrigan at the CIF State Championships next month, said the San Benito program fosters its own success.
“Every year, we keep taking the level higher and higher,” Schroder related. “It’s just always going to go higher.”
And part of continuous improvement lies in the competition among the ‘Balers. Camaraderie aside, when individual ‘Balers face each other in competition, especially in the more prestigious meets, their inner competitiveness brings out a whole different dynamic in the sport.
“Deep down, everyone’s trying to be the top dog,” Trinidad explained. “Out there on the runway, if you look back in a competition, it’s all business for those guys. You want to be the man. You want to have the spotlight on you. Everyone wants the spot of the king.
“When the bar goes up, it’s showtime.”
