Jill Reynolds a 49er daredevil (Long Beach State)

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http://www.presstelegram.com/sports/ci_5859282

Reynolds a 49er daredevil
BWC pole vault champion thrilled with event.
By Frank Burlison, Staff writer
Article Launched: 05/09/2007 11:27:16 PM PDT


Long Beach State's Jill Reynolds is looking to successfully defend her women's pole vault title at the Big West Conference Championships on Friday at Cal State Northridge. (Photo courtesy Long Beach State)
LONG BEACH - By the time Jill Reynolds was 2 years old, her parents realized they'd better involve her with something in which she could channel her, uh, excess energy or the walls of their home might coming tumbling down.
"She was awesome . . . really spunky," Jeff Reynolds said of his daughter, a Long Beach State junior, Wednesday afternoon during a break from his job as an operating engineer for Pacoima-based Champion Crane. "She seemed to want to climb on everything."

A "Mommy and Me" gymnastics class for Sue Reynolds and her daughter evolved into 11 years of mostly 40-hour weeks of training in the sport for Jill, now a 21-year-old Kinesiology major at LBSU.

"I was in the Junior Olympics in Salt Lake City when I was 12," she said the other day, matter-of-factly, in between a couple of the classes that help make up the 18 units she's enrolled in this semester. "That was an amazing experience."

But she slipped while vaulting when she was 13, rolled some vertebrae and it was time to pick "a safer sport," she said, laughing.

So then it was on to soccer and tennis and, well, just about anything else where she could work off the energy via some very aggressive effort.

"I'd hop on

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a skateboard, skis, motorcycle or dirt bike," she said. "And our family (which includes older brother Chris, now a 23-year-old senior at San Diego State) was always boating. I'm a daredevil - I just love heights and speed."
The pursuit of heights and thrills - "Yeah, an adrenaline junkie is what you'd call me," she said - led her to bungee jumping as a 15-year-old and then sky diving on her 18th birthday, with a somewhat reluctant dad in tow.

She's still pursuing her conquest of heights as a member of Long Beach State coach Andy Sythe's track and field program.

Reynolds will attempt to defend the crown she won in the pole vault a year ago when the Big West Conference Championships get under way Friday at Cal State Northridge.

She was 24th in the NCAA West Regional Meet last spring with a then-career best of 12 feet, 6 inches.

Reynolds' best is now 13-1 1/5 (during the March 9-10 Ben Brown Meet in Fullerton), leaving her just 2 3/4 inches short of the school mark established five years ago by Connie Jerz.

Not bad for an athlete who admits to standing "5-1 on a good day" and usually finds herself lining up against competitors who are usually 6 to 9 inches taller than she is.

"Speaking from the perspective of the physics of the event," Sythe explained, "the taller, with leverage (on the pole), the better. It is everything (in the event). And you have to be awfully good at the `other things' to overcome those physics."

Those "other things" - including speed, strength, determination and technique - are what will earn Reynolds airfare to Eugene, Ore. (for the NCAA West Regional meet) in two weeks and, possibly, to Sacramento for the NCAA Championship meet June 6-9.

"It's a very complex and complicated event, because there are so many variables that play into it and factor into a bad or good jump," she said. "First, you have to be fast. Second, you have to also be fast while running with the pole. Then, you need the upper-body strength to bend the pole and get the core of your body upside down and over the bar."

She smiled.

"They say that, nine times out of 10, the girl who is going to win is going to be the girl who is tallest and holds the highest on the biggest pole," she said. "And I'm that one who is the shortest, holding the lowest on her pole. So, everything else has to be perfect."

Reynolds, whose cousins Brian (crew) and Travis (water polo) are LBSU athletes, aspires for careers as a Chiropractor (she's toting a 3.5 GPA) and movie and television stunt double (she's already been on a few auditions), doesn't know the meaning of "vegging in front of the TV, while dozing on a couch and munching on a hefty-sized bowl of chips."

There is no time - "Look at this!" she said, flipping the pages of a day planner crammed with places to be and things to do - or inclination.

"I've always been an overachiever, in terms of time management," she said. "It comes from the days of spending six days and about 40 hours a week working out (for gymnastics), going to school and doing homework.

"A nap? I'd love to have time to take a nap."

Lazy afternoons or evenings pretty much were dashed from any future Jill Reynolds day planner when someone encouraged to go out for the Valencia High track and field program as a freshman and then handed her a pole and said "go for it!"

"I just love it now," she said.

Why?

Well, because it gives her the same feeling she had when she dove out of a plane for the first (but not last; "I'm going again," she said, "but it cost a lot - about $180) time and descended to Earth.

"You come out of a cloud (while sky diving) and it's as if you're just floating," she said. "I get that same feeling when I clear the bar, see it stay on and I start to fall (into the pit)."

She smiled.

"That," she said, "is what I live for."