Peter Chapman (CA) Climbing Charts (16-0)

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http://www.pe.com/sports/high-school/hs ... charts.ece


TRACK AND FIELD: Murrieta Valley’s Chapman climbing charts

BY MIRJAM SWANSON STAFF WRITER mswanson@pe.com
Published: 17 March 2012 06:53 PM

MURRIETA VALLEY — Peter Chapman goes at track and field’s most daring discipline a little like X Gamers approach theirs.

“He’s cautious,” said dad/coach Charles Chapman of Peter’s appetite and aptitude for launching himself skyward, as high, in fact, as any pole vaulter in area history.

“He defines where his parameters are, and he’s willing to take a risk, but they’re calculated risks.”

And if that’s not exactly what the action sports types will say.

The top freestyle motocross riders and BMXers want to be defined not as daredevils but as athletes who train relentlessly to pull off the most precise of plans.

Peter Chapman, a Murrieta Valley senior with a great big grin that’s carried over from last year’s CIF State track and field championships, is that type of committed to those kinds of plans.

After joining Solomon Ijah last season as the first Nighthawk track and field athletes to compete at the state meet, Chapman wasted no time this season clearing 16 feet, getting it done March8 during a relaxed non-league dual meet at Perris.

“It was a long time being on the pole, getting upside down, getting launched up and then going over,” Chapman said. “And then a fun ride down.”

The second-best mark in California so far this season made Chapman the co-holder of the area record with Elsinore’s Richard Leverson, who broke the 12-year-old mark by 3 inches last season.

But bigger heights will require baby steps, the Chapmans believe. Peter still is using a relatively short 15-foot pole, so when he achieved his greatest height yet, it was him who did it and not the pole.

“We’re working on taking the technique from the 15-foot pole (to) these bigger poles,” said Peter, whose offseason consisted of running and lifting, and whose season includes running the 100 meters (in a personal-best 12.5 seconds), extra video sessions at home and twice-a-month visits to Chula Vista, where he works with renowned pole vaulter Stacy Dragila.

“My end goal for this season is to pull off a 17-plus vault,” Chapman said, no doubt about it. “To hopefully add another foot.”

To his to his fellow Murrieta Valley vaulters, that’s mind-boggling, action sports-hero talk.

“It’s, like, unthinkable,” Amy Angevine said.

“Craaaazy,” Jessica Abalos said.

“Yeah,” Annika Backlund added, “that is so far.”

But that’s the airspace where Chapman, a longtime Kung Fu student whose course load includes physics, chemistry and Spanish 4, is wired to fly.

It was a clip in a 2008 Olympic montage he watched that inspired him to pick up the pole in first place.

“There was a pole vaulter and I just remember him saying it was like the most rebellious sport,” Chapman said. “Your mom always tells you not to run with a stick in your hand and not to do something crazy, and the pole vault combines both of those!

“It just went from there.”

Cautiously.