Keenan King to speak in Hannibal, MO

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http://www.hannibal.net/stories/032306/ ... 3032.shtml

Olympic hopeful to speak at KIM's anniversary
King was among first employees
By BEV DARR
Of the Courier-Post

Former Hannibal high track star Keenan King, an Olympic hopeful in pole vaulting, has come a long way in the past 10 years. At age 14, in 1996, he was among the first group of local youth hired as Kids In Motion (KIM) workers for the summer employment program.




Keenan King will be the honored speaker at the Kids In Motion 10th anniversary reception 6:30 p.m. March 24. (C-P photo/Amanda Stratford)
This week King is visiting Hannibal to speak at KIM's 10th anniversary reception. He also is meeting with the track teams at both Hannibal middle and high schools. His brother, Shad King, a high school junior, is a member of the track team, also doing pole vault.

Keenan King went to Sacramento, Calif., in 2004, to try out for the Olympics in the pole vault. He plans to make a second try in 2008, after competing this year and in 2007 in the national events.

King's mother, Barbara King, is among the people he is visiting this week. He arrived just in time to celebrate his 24th birthday on Saturday, March 18. His return visit from his home in Phoenix was financed by a Riedel Foundation grant, according to KIM program director Amy Vaughn. She said she appreciated the foundation "for bringing Keenan back to celebrate KIM's 10th anniversary."

The reception will be at 6:30 Friday, March 24, at the Hannibal Inn and Conference Center, 4141 Market St.

Keenan King recalls applying for his KIM job as he finished eighth grade. "I remember I put on a suit and went in and interviewed with Sherri Steinmann." He was one of a group of 14-year-olds who were allowed to work at McDonald's as part of KIM.

After beginning at McDonald's at age 14, King worked there all through high school. He remembers that until age 16, there were rules. "We couldn't work after 8 and only worked four hours a day, and we could only do so many hours a week."

As a college student King returned to work as a KIM supervisor in the summer of 2001. "I was a supervisor on the vans," he said. "They had young kids, 12- and 13-year-olds. They did beautifying Hannibal projects, such as pulling weeds."

Later King went to Arizona and did construction work one summer, where he met his first coach, Todd Lehman, to train for the Olympic tryouts. In 2003 he decided to make his home in Phoenix, where he now has a new coach. King had been attending Monmouth College in Monmouth, Ill.

He will encourage Hannibal youth to apply to work for KIM. "I will tell kids to do it, because when you are at that age, there is not a whole lot for you to do around here. They all need to get some sort of sense of responsibility."

King was busy in high school, because he was in three HHS sports - football, basketball and track - "and I didn't have idle time."

This week he is "glad to be home and have the opportunity to tell people about getting away from Hannibal. I watch a lot of my friends and people graduated with not doing anything, and a lot of kids who came from the neighborhood I grew up in."

His message to young people is, "there are other things you can do than go to work. ...They need to get out of here and go see something. It is amazing what you learn when you travel. I took a semester off (from college), and it was the best thing for me.

"It was all God," he continued. "I met my coach. Everybody else had a different agenda of what I was supposed to be doing, but it wasn't until I started following the desires of my own heart, which was God-given, that led me to where I am now. ...If you listen (to God) He will talk to you."

King had been living in Phoenix for some time and was working in a restaurant while continuing his training in pole vault.

He had a small setback in pole vaulting last year. "I had a nerve pinched off in my hip that made me not be able to move my foot. I couldn't run on it, but it was a blessing. It made me get my personal life in order. God moved me to a different level."

He had a message from God. "I was working in a restaurant, and God said 'leave.' He said 'Go live with your father.' So I did. I moved in with him (William Colbert, who also lives in Phoenix). I put in my two weeks notice that day and left.

"Since then I got a position coaching, which was a blessing I didn't even realize. I coach track and field at Paradise Valley Community College."

He coaches hurdles, rather than pole vaulting. "It has given me a good break from thinking about pole vaulting," King said.

"I'm not making a lot of money at the moment, but I'm happy, because I'm doing what I love to do. There is peace in that, that a nine-to-five job wouldn't give me."

King also is active in his church, Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church in Phoenix, which has 3,000 members and is led by Bishop Alexis Thomas. King is in the men's ministry, singles' ministry and music ministry.

King's pole vaulting career is continuing, and he is training under a new coach. His coach is Greg Hull, whom he described as, "the actual coach of the Olympic champions.

"That was all God - for me to end up in that situation," King said. "Now I need all new poles, because I've been doing so well. I now go over 18.8 on a 16.5 pole from 12 steps. ... I'm holding higher and jumping higher. In order to keep moving forward I have to get new poles."

He also has a goal of earning a degree in psychology, "which I think will help me with coaching," because "as a coach, you are a counselor, and when I'm out, people talk to me about a lot of things."

He added that age 24 is not old for a pole vaulter. "This is an old man's sport, prime until 35 or 36. I'm planning on riding it out and taking my time and perfecting my sport."

His next Olympics tryouts will be in 2008, but for the two years before that he will continue to compete. This June he will compete in the national championships in Sacramento, Calif., and next year in the same event in Indianapolis.

"I will have an Olympics goal until I'm 40," King said. "I haven't done anything but get better every year. There is no doubt in my mind that this is what I'm supposed to be doing."

He again emphasized that all he has came from God, explaining, "there is no way I would have come this far and had this vision of what I'm supposed to do, coming out of Hannibal and ending up where I am now. It is nothing but God."