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Colwick dominates pole vault once again
Jonathan Myers

Issue date: 2/6/09 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Joel Khan
Junior Jason Colwick defies gravity as he flips over a 5.4 meter bar, setting a new school record as well as an NCAA provisional qualifying height.

The University of Houston's Yeoman Fieldhouse has suddenly become one giant good luck charm for the men's track team. After finishing in first place two weeks ago at the Leonard Hilton Invitational, also held at UH, the Owls turned in some incredible individual performances on Saturday.

Junior Jason Colwick started the weekend with a new school record for the pole vault in indoor competition. His vault of 5.40 meters broke Paul Bratloff's mark of 5.26 meters set in 1983. Both Colwick, who was just named Conference USA Male Athlete of the Week on Tuesday, and sophomore Shea Kearney tied Bratloff's mark last year. Colwick now owns both the school indoor and outdoor records for the pole vault, as he vaulted 5.55 meters to win the Texas Relays last April. Saturday's vault was the third-best in the nation this year and was a provisional qualifying mark for the NCAA Indoor Championships.

Head coach Jon Warren (Jones '88) spoke of the difficulties that track and field athletes must overcome just to qualify for the national championship.

"I cannot emphasize how difficult it is to get into the NCAA meet for indoors," Warren said. "If you assume three people per event, per school, with 300 schools, that's 900 people [competing]. 15 people make it. That's 1.5, 1.8 percent. That's kind of like making the BCS National Championship."

Considering that there aren't any pesky sportswriters or BCS computers to keep Colwick out of the meet, it looks like he has a good chance to go to the NCAA Championships in March. The rest of the pole vault team turned in excellent numbers as well, with junior Chris Kato finishing third and sophomore Garrett Stafford matching his personal best of 4.61 meters.

Good timing on this article... Colwick went 5.60 at Nebraska today!

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/6283889.html

How high can he go?
Already one of the top 25 pole vaulters in the world, the sky’s the limit for Rice’s Jason Colwick
By STEVE CAMPBELL Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
Feb. 26, 2009, 11:01PM
photo
Mayra Beltran Chronicle

The NCAA’s top-ranked pole vaulter in the country, Rice’s Jason Colwick, has broken the school’s indoor record in the event three times over the last four weeks.


The Rice Owls’ track schedule left Jason Colwick with no choice. He had to give it a rest last weekend, had to let somebody else be the biggest fish in the Conference USA pond.

There was no meet for Colwick, which meant no chance to break yet another school pole vault record, and no C-USA Male Athlete of the Week honors. Colwick rested easily, contentedly, knowing it was humanly impossible for him to extend his C-USA Athlete of the Week streak to four.

“I’m very much enjoying this,” Colwick said. “I can’t wait for the next month to happen.”

Colwick gets his next chance to show just how high he can soar at the Conference USA Indoor Championships, which run today and Saturday at Yeoman Fieldhouse at the University of Houston. The NCAA Championship meet looms March 13-14 in College Station.

He is ranked first in the NCAA, third in the United States and 23rd in the world. In the words of Rice pole vault coach David Butler, Colwick is “focused, hungry, motivated and ready to fly.”

How high?

“He could be in the hunt in 2012 (for an Olympic medal),” said Butler, a member of the USA National Pole Vault Developmental Staff. “That’s how good he is.”

Four weekends ago at the Houston Invitational, Colwick broke the school indoor record by vaulting 17 feet, 8.5 inches. Three weekends ago at the Frank Sevigne Classic, Colvick shattered that record with a vault of 18 -41/2 . Two weekends ago at the Texas A&M Invitational, Colwick outdid himself again by going 18 -43/4 .

Up, up and away. He is 3.25 inches away from cracking the top 10 of the all-time NCAA rankings.
Redeemable values

“I feel terrific,” said Colwick, a 6-0, 160-pound junior. “This is the sort of form that showed up last year briefly that me and my coach both knew existed. There are a lot of guys in D1 who can pop something big. I’m going to do my best to not get nervous and keep it rolling.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s the haircut.”

Colwick got his hopes so high in 2008. He left himself high and dry in the end, which may or may not explain why he got a buzz cut. He established himself as a vaulter on the rise last April at the Texas Relays in Austin, breaking the oldest school track record in books. A vault of 18 -21/2 broke the Rice record Dave Roberts had owned since 1972.

“That day, something just snapped,” Colwick said. “Every single jump, I was firing it off on the first attempt. That 18-foot bar was a big deal.”

He arrived at the 2008 NCAA meet ranked No. 1 in the nation, only to come away empty. Butler blames the performance on an ankle injury suffered two weeks before the NCAAs. At the Olympic Trials in Eugene, Ore., Colwick went 17 -81/2 and finished 14th.

“The trials were a bit surreal,” Colwick said. “I remember watching the (Steve) Prefontaine movie Without Limits a few years ago and seeing the huge grandstands with the awnings on top of them. Now all of a sudden I’m standing underneath them. Morgan Freeman is doing a Visa commercial about Brian Clay (the 2008 gold-medal decathlete) on the big screen. And I’m shooting the breeze with the Olympic gold medalist on the vault from Athens (Timothy Mack).

“I definitely soaked up a lot from that meet.”

Colwick got his start in pole vaulting as a seventh grader in San Marcos. After an undistinguished season as a 100-pound, third-string tailback on the B team, Colwick decided to try out for track.

“I would get clobbered by guys literally twice my size and think, ‘This sport is definitely not for me,’ ” Colwick said. “To this day, I cannot figure out why everyone wouldn’t raise their hand when coach asked if we wanted to try pole vault.”
Once a gymnast

He also has a background as gymnast, which helps account for what Butler characterizes as a one-of-a-kind, two-legged takeoff. While other vaulters drive their knees upward to provide liftoff, Colwick relies on his hips to provide sufficient thrust.

“It’s a different technique, but it’s what he does,” Butler said. “It works. It really works.”

It’s liable to take Colwick to places he’d never contemplated. Though Colwick is a double major (engineering and economics) who frets about upcoming tests, he’s beginning to consider other horizons.
Moving quickly

“I’m very parochial by nature,” said Colwick, whose only trip outside the country was a foray to Mexico. “But I’d love to visit some places where I hear some of these international meets take place. Who wouldn’t want to spend their 20s roaming around places like Osaka (Japan), Donetsk (Ukraine), or Monte Carlo? Maybe I will be a pole vault bum for a while.”

The next big goal for Colwick is to break the 19-foot barrier. Butler insists he has seen Colwick clear the bar by 18 inches on vaults of 18-41/2 . The past two Olympic champions have cleared 19-6. Do the math.

“So we know he can be one of the best,” Butler said. “The neat thing is, he knows it and he believes it.”

Colwick is barely 21. He’s moving up in the world fast enough to make the nose bleed.

“I didn’t know until a few years ago that there was an underground pole vault world or that it’s as big as it is,” Colwick said. “It’s very comforting knowing there are guys who have gone through or are going through what I am now. X number of years ago, vaulter Y was staring down the runway at his first bar, matriculating through college, learning to cook for himself.

“It makes the question of why in the world am I doing this answerable.”