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Costa soaring toward women's pole vaulting greatness
By ANDY BOOGARD
June 4, 2003
Grandma Valoff was the first to recognize the gifts - the compact legs, the strength, the coordination, the toughness.
All the attributes, she dreamed, of a famed American Olympic gymnast named Retton.
"Our little Mary Lou," she told her daughter, Sheryl Costa.
Granddaughter Kira Costa, 2 months old, was bouncing on the changing table.
She was special. They know this now. And not just a grandmother with golden intuition.
Eighteen years later, they know of Kira Costa in hometown Lemoore, in Fresno, in the state, in the country, in the world.
Grandma noticed in diapers.
Some saw when a 10-year-old, in essentially her first official track and field meet, long-jumped 13 feet, 8 inches. The national record for Costa's age group was 14-0 1/2.
A few more heads turned a year later when she placed seventh in the pentathlon at the USATF Junior Olympics in Houston.
Attention intensified the next year as a 12-year-old when she set national Amateur Athletic Union age-group records in the high jump (5-2 1/2) and pentathlon (2,850 points). That earned her a half-page "Hot Shot" spread in Sports Illustrated for Kids.
The routine had begun.
"I have 13 national medals," she says today.
She would cherish none more than a gold in this weekend's California State Track and Field Championship at Cerritos College.
The senior is favored in the pole vault as the national leader at 13-3.
In February, she set the national high school indoor record with a leap of 13-4 1/2.
This, merely 13 months after she first grabbed a stick in competition.
"She has always set the standards really high, really quick," says her father, David Costa.
Making her mark:
First, she grabs the pole of her choice. There are seven from which to pick.
She selects a 13-foot, 7-inch piece of fiberglass - cost: $300-plus - and drags it to the top of the runway recently in the Central Section finals.
She dances a bit on her toes.
Ready for takeoff, she establishes her grip - left hand first, knuckles up; right hand on top, palm down. She elevates the 7-pound pole as a knight would his lance, right biceps bulging.
She rocks back with her right leg and then explodes, a powerfully built 5-foot-3, 125-pound machine that will cover the 95-foot approach in 17 strides.
"A normal high school girl would cover 12 to 14 feet less with the same amount of strides," says former Fresno State All-America decathlete and current Fresno City track and field assistant Scott Wenholz, who is observing from the south-side bleachers.
"Kira's running technique allows this."
Gradually, she lowers the pole, plants it in the eight-inch box, flexes the pole to 110 degrees, aims her feet toward the blue sky, twists her body at its zenith, clears the crossbar and plunges back to Earth, bouncing like a rubber ball off the foam pit. She smiles and acknowledges cheers with a wave of both hands, now a two-time section champion, a section record-holder and a national leader at 13-3.
"This is cool," she says, using her favorite word. "It's cool to look back and know all the work is paying off. People ask me for my autograph, that's cool. It's like, 'Wow, I'm pretty good now.'"
Cool. And perhaps predictable.
Her parents, David and Sheryl, are licensed civil engineers who met while earning their degrees at Cal Poly.
"We like to analyze things, projections and angles," Sheryl Costa says. "And, of course, we know a little bit about athletics, so we figure it out."
So they do at their daughter's every meet, mom firing away with the camcorder and dad usually hugging the rail nearest to the track.
"Move back 2 inches. Go up a pole. Adjust the standard."
Dad is coaching, and this is the way it should be, Bob Slover says.
"I'm not going to be there at the meets, but Kira's parents are," says the former world-class vaulter who has trained her on weekends since October out of Los Gatos. "Her dad studies and watches film. He's obviously concerned with his daughter's success." David Costa says: "Bob's whole attitude is to teach us how to teach Kira because he knew he wouldn't be there (at meets), and vaulting needs such technical help."
And Kira, a 4.0 student bound for Cal on a full track and field scholarship valued at $27,000 annually, adds: "I've had a lot of help from random people in the Valley, but my parents have been my primary coaches since I was 10. It's cool to know I've put in so many hours of track - not just mine, my parents' hours - and we're getting what we deserve."
Yet, as Kira was tugging at her parents' sleeves three years ago, thirsting to learn how to pole vault, mom had reservations.
"We looked around (at meets) and saw all these people with all those poles," she says. "Gosh, it looked too complex."
But her daughter was a pentathlete turned heptathlete whose interest beckoned at rumors of the decathlon expanding to women.
Neither the five-event pentathlon nor the seven-event heptathlon, which is sponsored in college, requires the pole vault.
But it could happen soon.
Kira Costa began pole vaulting as a sophomore in the spring of 2001. It didn't fly.
"It started messing her up in other events because she was too scattered," mom says.
Says dad: "Two crossbars (pole vault and high jump) are one too many."
So their daughter dumped the event after two weeks, never clearing more than 8 feet, but was determined to start over in August, leading into her junior year.
"Last year, I just wanted to learn," says Costa.
"Just learn" hardly projected to 12 feet in her first competition. But that's what she cleared in January 2002 in the Reno Summit directed by Fresno State track and field coach Bob Fraley.
Eight feet to 12 feet. With six months of training.
"Probably a world record for a one-meet (personal record)," it said in California Track & Running News.
Ranked eighth nationally among high school vaulters at the time, Costa had become an instant sensation in the event.
"You do get those kids once in awhile," Slover says, "and, obviously, Kira's one of them. She's a great athlete, fast, and for whatever reason, has picked up pole vault very quickly."
He and Fraley, chairman of Pole Vault Development in the United States, say Costa has all the components of a successful vaulter - strength, power, speed and coordination.
And, Fraley adds, "She has a kinesthetic feel, knowing where she's at when turned upside down."
Now looms one compelling question: In her quest to become an Olympian - "I figure I've got three or four to try for," she says - is Kira Costa nearing a ceiling because of her height? USA 2000 Olympic champion and world record-holder Stacy Dragila (15-9 1/4) is 5-7 1/2.
"I don't see a problem with it," says Costa, who hasn't grown since seventh grade.
Russian indoor record-holder Svetlana Feofanova (15-9), at 5-3 1/2, and Becky Holliday (14-6), the NCAA's premier female vaulter from Oregon, at 5-3, offer inspiration.
"Speed comes into the equation," David Costa says of his daughter who has run a hand-timed 12.1-second 100 meters, and also blew away the Central Section 100 high hurdles field in 14.65. She'll concentrate only on vaulting at state.
Strength equally is a factor, testament to the fact she's using a pole designed for a 160-pound person. "A man's pole," dad says.
Last Sunday, Costa was one of two high school athletes invited to the Golden Spike Tour's Track & Field Invitational at Cal State-Dominguez Hills in Carson, Calif.
Dragila won at 14-9. Costa, competing in a field featuring three Olympians, placed fifth at 13-1 1/2.
A 32-year-old Olympian. An 18-year-old prep.
"An amazing kid," says mom, the civil engineer who needn't try hard to analyze this one.
And that's cool.
E-mail Andy Boogard at aboogaard(at)fresnobee.com.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com.)