The Persistent Pupil

When it came to pole-vaulting, Brian Kelly and Mack could have been soul mates at Malone College. Kelly, however, had the soul of Peter Parker—after the radioactive spider bit him. At Malone College, Kelly would walk past the trophies displayed in niches in the wall in the foyer of Osborne Hall, the fieldhouse, and suddenly, he would become Spiderman. He would grab the sturdy brown frame around a display and hang there upside down. Mack, laughing, would seek one of the lesser-known exits for his getaway.

“It’s a gift,” Kelly said, modestly. “I was always the guy who kept Tim loose. It was like ‘Stupid Human Tricks’ on David Letterman.”

They were best friends then. In fact, it was Kelly’s development as a 17-foot jumper in 1992 that caught Mack’s attention. They are best friends now. Mack trusts Kelly, an investments counselor, to attend to his financial portfolio. Today, palm-sized bronze plaques of Mack and Kelly hang on the wall in the gym lobby that Malone College reserves for its All-Americans.

Kelly, along with teammate Rich Hlaudy, whose plaque is also on the All-Americans’ wall, recruited Mack to come to Malone, a member of the American Midwest Conference of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA).

Mack went to the Quaker college because he felt pole-vault coach Ralph Schreiber, Kelly, and Hlaudy had a road map that could take him to the highway to heaven in the event. They didn’t part ways until it became obvious that the sky was the limit for Mack, if not for them.

What times they had, jumping when the wind screamed and the sleet aligned itself in battle ranks behind that moaning bugle call, and only mad dogs and pole-vaulters were out. The pole vault is a difficult enough event anywhere. In the Great Lakes area, on the Malone football field, which is only a punt, pass, and kick from the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, and sits on a hill overlooking Interstate 77, it is daunting enough to make a man wish for superpowers. To jump in Ohio in the spring, you have to be efficient in temperatures only Mr. Freeze could love. The wind, a pole-vaulter’s bane, is often fanged with sleet, which rattles off a man’s skin like birdshot. Staying healthy is extremely hard.

At Malone, Schreiber was there every day they could practice, filming their jumps for step-by-step deconstruction later. Other times were high in a literal sense. There was no avoiding the initiation ritual, no ducking it for the men who rode the sticks. If you were a pole-vaulter, you clambered out on the rafters above the mats, maybe 30 feet high, with the monitors that the school’s distance runners wore lashed to your chest, and your heart thumping like a jackhammer before you let go, and then you were falling into the pit of all your fears, screaming, shaking and alive in every cell of your body to have done it.

It wasn’t the heights or the bravado that most drew Schreiber to Mack, however. It was a homelier quality. Kelly and Mark Croghan, who ran at Ohio State and became a two-time Olympian in the steeplechase, were teammates at Green High School in the Canton suburbs. Together, they took the small school to an Ohio state championship in track and field. Years later, it struck Schreiber, as Mack bloomed into a world-class pole-vaulter, that the sign that hung over the coach’s door at Green High School really was a perfect description of Mack. It was a quote from, of all taciturn individuals, Calvin Coolidge, long before he became president of the United States.

“You always hear about Calvin Coolidge being ‘Silent Cal,’” said Schreiber. “But he said at least one thing worth remembering. He said: ‘Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.’”

“That is as good a description as you are going to get of Tim Mack,” Schreiber added. “He kept working and working, and he never gave up. He kept working and working, making small improvements until he got there.”

He would jump 15–6 (4.70) his first year in college, 17–3 (5.26) the next year, on to 17–5 (5.31), then, after transferring to the University of Tennessee, 18–0½ (5.50) and 18–4½ (5.60) in his last season of eligibility. Mack said it was a long road, but it paid off. “I really just tried to get better at everything instead of just vaulting. Every year, I ran a little bit faster, lifted a little more weight, was more aware in the gymnastics room, threw the medicine ball farther, and did more gymnastics work. I never tried to be perfect, just better,” he said.

The first forum in which he practiced his aggressive brand of self-improvement was the NAIA. It once turned out such players as the NBA’s Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman as well as Major League Baseball’s Brett Butler. But now television ignores it. The NAIA is not a branch of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. It has its own leagues and own national championships. The NAIA is simply another governing body for intercollegiate athletics in the United States. NAIA schools typically have less stringent academic requirements, but its members compete against NCAA schools in all divisions in most college sports. Malone pole-vaulters went over Notre Dame vaulters when they met them in meets during these years like airplanes go over your head.

Great athletes play in many different organizations. There were football players worthy of the NFL in the All-America Football Conference, the American Football League, the World Football League, and even the xecrable (CQ), xasperating (CQ) and quickly xtinct (CQ) XFL. There were great basketball players in the American Basketball Association, such as Julius “Dr. J” Erving. Wayne Gretzky began his hockey career in the World Hockey Association.

Likewise, there’s no rule that great jumpers can only find their wings in the NCAA. In large part, the scholarship Schreiber gave Mack was serendipity. Schreiber worked as an official at track meets in the summer, prospecting for the kid whom the bigger schools had overlooked, the still-green pole-vaulter who would ripen later, the competitor who never surrendered, the guy whom Calvin Coolidge would have loved. He found him in Tim Mack.

“I first saw Tim jump at a Junior Olympics meet in Brunswick, Ohio, near Cleveland,” Schreiber said. “I usually knew about the good vaulters in the area, but I didn’t see him until after he graduated. He slipped under my radar. With his September birthday, he was very young for his class, so he had always been behind. He was tall, gangly, and his body was still developing. He had decent speed, so I thought he could be very good if he put on some weight and strength.”

Like Mack’s boyhood coaches before him, Schreiber quickly found that Mack could assemble the elements of the pole vault as quickly as Detroit put together automobiles. The Malone coach walked over to Mack, asked him his personal best, and passed on suggestions when he found it was 13–5¾ (4.11). “He cleared 14 feet [4.27] that day at that meet,” Schreiber said. “Tim was willing to try anything you suggested.”

Kelly and Hlaudy recruited for Malone College every time they cleared a bar. Now the Malone pole-vaulting coach had just met a young jumper who hadn’t grown into his body yet, who came out of high school with no bad habits, and who soaked up coaching like a thirsty camel soaked up water at an oasis. Two more scouting trips to Mack’s summer meets, and Schreiber was sold. So was Mack.

“It was easy to be impressed by Malone when you looked at Brian jumping 17–4 there. I thought that was unbelievable,” said Mack.

“I didn’t know if Tim was going to stay in the sport,” Schreiber said. “He was going to go to the University of Toledo and walk-on [compete in hopes of earning a scholarship]. But they didn’t have a strong program at the time.”

Schreiber had pole-vaulted at Centre College in Kentucky. “I was way before fiberglass. In fact, I started with bamboo. Man, that thing was heavy. I used metal too, but I never got much over 9 feet,” said Schreiber.

It would be tougher selling Mack’s parents on Quaker Malone. The Macks are devout Catholics. Schreiber, however, had seen Kelly, a transfer from Ohio State, thrive at Malone, with its personalized attention and stricter rules. Kelly indisputably did not blossom until Malone, which has an enrollment of only 2,000, compared to Ohio State’s nearly 50,000. “With some kids, it works out better to go to the small school first. I thought Tim could be one of those kids,” Schreiber said.

On their official recruiting visit, the small college coach, who was gravity-bound in his day, and his two jumpers, who were clearing bars north of reality, deployed like commandos on a mission at the Macks’ brick home in Westlake. Schreiber chatted easily with Mack, knowing he had already been convinced of Malone’s vaulting virtuosity. Hlaudy, a devout Catholic, neutralized the doubts of Tim’s mother about the school’s religious orientation. Kelly talked sports with Tim’s father and showed him Malone College’s upcoming schedule. “When Tim’s father looked at the schedule and asked Brian, ‘Where do we go next?’ I knew we had them,” said Schreiber.

Kelly had occupied the room next to the dorm stairwell at Ohio State, and Flounder and the gang from Animal House seemed to go yelling up and down the steps at all hours of the night. Accordingly, he was frank with Mack when discussing the stricter rules of Malone.

“It’s not like you have to become a Quaker, but Malone might not be the best place to be socially,” Kelly said. “If you want to vault really high, though, you’ll be able to do that.”

This was not the “thee” and “thou” Quakerism of the movies. The Quakers believe in egalitarianism and brotherly love, in the Inner Light that illuminates each heart. They emphasize the conscientiousness with which a person pursues his calling.

Tim Mack had been conscientious about sports since he learned to ride a bike. His belief in himself was often the only bright spot in a career that could have been a snapshot of darkness. He subscribed to no one school of pole vaulting but borrowed what seemed helpful from anyone. He valued most of all his own internalized experiences as they translated into mathematical formulas that flamed like stars, guiding his path upward.

Much like St. Ignatius High School, Malone tries to instill a sense of ethical altruism. Its mission statement is posted inside a stairwell in Osborne Hall. The unobtrusive location seems to make it part of the everyday life of the school rather than putting it on ostentatious display in the foyer. “The mission of Malone College,” it reads, “is to provide students with an education based on biblical faith in order to develop men and women of intellectual maturity, wisdom and Christian faith who are committed to serving the church, community and world.”

As far as a party atmosphere goes, lamp shades were seldom used for millinery purposes at Malone College. Alcohol was not allowed anywhere on campus. Female visitors were allowed in men’s dorm rooms three times a week—as long as the door to the room was open and both feet were on the floor.

“Tim lived next door, and I indirectly met my wife through Tim,” said Kelly. “It was one of those opposite-sex nights in the dorm. Tim and I were guys who didn’t exactly make our beds with painstaking care. Tim wasn’t a slob, but he just had the sheets and covers pulled up over the pillows. My wife Ginger and another girl walked by, saw that, and started making the bed.”

After seeing this, Kelly promptly raced from next door, piled into the bed like a kid making snow angels in fluffy powder, and started thrashing around with his arms and legs. Both feet were off the floor. Just this once.

“Although Tim and I were both raised Catholic, he didn’t have that tough a time with it, because he had been to St. Ignatius,” said Kelly.

Both liked nothing better than soaring to the rooftops of possibility. They would fool around after pole vault practice, dunking basketballs. Both could throw it down, although it had to be one of the stickier basketballs in the rack, and all their cylinders had to be firing. Still, practice was never a chore with them; it was fun up there where the air was fresh and sweet.

They also played on the same flag football team. “He was the quarterback, and I was the wide receiver,” Mack said. “We were to the Malone flag football league what Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison are to the NFL. We just knew where each other would be.”

Tim was comfortable with his teammates and with Malone College. But to a pole-vaulter, a comfort zone can be where the danger zone begins.

A pole-vaulter often seems to be hanging right on the edge of crazy. The psychological demands are enormous. “It’s a matter of just letting go and trusting your technique,” Mack said. “To jump high, you almost have to put yourself in an unsafe position to get there.”

Mack’s hazing at Malone consisted of a rafter in Osborne Hall, a pole vault pit far below, and one scared daredevil never-be who would really rather be on the ground where things are nice and safe. “It’s not that I have acrophobia,” Mack said. “But I am not going to jump off a bridge, out of an airplane, or go cliff-diving anytime soon. I am not an extreme sports buff. I pole-vault.”

As Mack inched his way above the floor, the heart monitor he was wearing reacted as a Geiger counter would have if the U.N. inspectors had actually found the WMD in Iraq. “Oh, we had a lot of fun with Tim in the rafters,” said Brian Kelly. “We had on the heart monitors the distance runners used to check their cardio fitness. We knew it bothered him. We could hear it chattering.”

“I took it as a challenge. You had to do it, even though you’re scared as can be, just to prove you’re not a wimp,” said Mack.

Hazing has gotten a very bad name in collegiate and interscholastic sports because of some gruesome excesses. It will never be stamped out, though, not in Olympic sports, which thrive on their identity as exclusive fraternities with demanding initiation rituals. Certainly it will not be extinguished in the pole vault, which skews to the extreme sports crowd anyway. “Pole-vaulters are the guys who would jump out of third-story fraternity windows into two inches of snow,” said Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith.

For his part, Ralph Schreiber knew about the rafters ritual but preferred not to check too closely on it. Mack had to prove he would take a dare just like his other teammates had.

“The whole idea was to get him outside his comfort zone,” Kelly said.

Mack passed the test, although his heart monitor might have hit full-tilt boogie when he was plummeting to the floor. “It sort of got you ready to pole-vault. When you’re actually competing, you’re too busy to worry about it,” said Mack. “The pole vault happens so fast that you don’t have time to think about being almost two stories off the ground. There’s always something you’re working on.”

“Vaulters do crazy stuff,” said Kelly. “Dave Volz [once ranked second in the U.S.] was at Indiana University at that time. He broke his ankle when he dropped from the rafters and missed the pole vault pit.”

Volz invented a pole-vaulting move that came to bear his name, in which the vaulter steadied the bar with his hand as he tumbled over it. It was a miracle of touch and timing called “Volzing.” The mental picture is of elegance, Strauss and the Vienna woods. Alas, they have played the last Volz.

Once the pegs were shortened, some Volzers went down six to eight inches overnight. Steadying the crossbar with the hand has now been specifically outlawed.

Pole-vaulting is a global village. When the Malone guys heard of a technique being used in France, they quickly adopted it. “We would throw a rope over the observation platform where they put cameras for basketball games,” Kelly said. “Then we’d set up a pole vault pit and swing from the observation platform out over the bar on the rope. Again, anything out of your comfort zone helps.”

“If you’re going to vault 17–5 [the school record], as Tim eventually did at Malone, in the air upside down on a pole you have to understand your surroundings and know how to get out of trouble,” Kelly said.

At Malone, Mack didn’t win a NAIA championship, proof both of the quality of competition and of how far he had to go. “I think you have to look at whom he was competing against,” said Kelly. “I was winning at Malone. Until Tim won an NCAA championship later in his career at Tennessee, he was always a step behind, even at Malone.”

It didn’t surprise Schreiber, however, that Mack became a two-time NAIA All-American at Malone. He had come to Malone as the nation’s Junior Olympics champion. He had won the National Christian College Athletic Championship. “He always had the ability, and he was so coachable,” Schreiber said.

The gold medal his old pupil had won in Athens didn’t shock Schreiber either. “We talked about the Olympics from the very beginning. In the pole vault, you aim high,” he said.

It was evident to Schreiber from the start that Mack had a technical strong point: his trail leg. Mack was red-shirted (kept from competing while reserving his year of eligibility) by injury his freshman year, because he developed a stress fracture in his left leg. A right-handed pole-vaulter like Mack takes off on his left leg, which then becomes the trail leg. This leg receives all the impact of the last step when the pole hits the back of the box. Theoretically, a vaulter tries to take off as the pole slams against the back of the box, reducing the stress. Theory, however, is not often practice. Most pole-vaulters overshoot their takeoff spot and are too close to the bar. A vaulter who is “under” at takeoff is slowing down and putting enormous stress on the back, groin and hamstring.

The worst year of Mack’s career came in 1997, when he missed the entire season with a groin pull in his left leg. Later in his career, a calf injury canceled his indoor season after he won the gold medal.

The early stress fracture probably came from improper equipment and from overusing the takeoff leg and being under at takeoff. The groin pull was from the brutal demands made on the trail leg in the beginning stages of flight. The calf injury was probably associated with overuse, training at too high a peak too early in the season.

“His strength is his trail leg. He keeps it long and generates a whole lot of momentum to get himself upside down,” said Schreiber. “His swing is very strong. He has been troubled by groin pulls because he stretched it when it was too tight. It’s like a rubber band. You don’t want to snap it by stretching it too far. But he had to be strong in everything to jump the heights he does.”

In pole-vaulting, it’s critical to keep the trail leg “long”—meaning only slightly bent. When Bubka vaulted, even when he was blasting to the box with more speed than any jumper ever possessed, the trail leg was a stilt. Full extension at takeoff begins with a long trail leg, so the pole-vaulter can execute a full swing. The trail leg in this instance acts like a lever. A shorter, bent lever (a tucked trail leg) does not generate as much momentum.

The same principle makes it advantageous for pole-vaulters to keep their arms straight on takeoff.

“People asked, ‘How do you keep your trail leg so long?’” Mack said. “Well, it was the result of thousands of repetitions.”

Typically, he devised a set of exercises he could use while laid up with the stress fracture. He would stand with a cut-down, short pole and go through the motions of jumping while just standing there. He would take the pole, put it over his head, and then bring it to his shoulders. Then, canting it upward and levering it down, he would pull it across his face and throw it away as if he were launched at long last. In his very first meet back, Mack cleared 15 feet. His previous career best had been 14–6.

Being a pole-vaulter, Mack also had a story behind the injury.

“We had a really short runway that was basically just a rubber mat rolled out across the gym floor,” Mack said. “We also had these shoes that we thought were cool looking. They were high jump shoes, and the more I wore them, the more I felt pain in my shins. I’d ask the athletic department secretary for aspirin every day before practice. Eventually that got back to Ralph and he came to see me. I had developed a stress fracture from the shoes and the surface.”

High jump shoes are less flexible than pole vault shoes. Mack had grounded himself by seeking high style. “When he found out, Ralph was not very happy,” Mack added.

Still, Schreiber had been more right about Mack than wrong. Strength came from the year-round training. Mack indeed had a big upside, and he improved rapidly as he grew stronger. “We started lifting in August. I wasn’t used to lifting until later. We did pole-vault drills I wasn’t doing until March,” Mack said.

The environment also made him stronger mentally. “It’s a big advantage in toughness being from the Midwest,” he said. “I had to learn to jump in the snow, learn to jump when it was really cold.”

Sometimes, athletes are disadvantaged by privilege. Mack was goaded by the absence of it.

Every day in an Ohio winter isn’t a nice day. The surf isn’t up. The surface of Lake Erie is frozen. If standards and a place to land were in place, Tim Mack and Brian Kelly would have practiced at Ice Station Zebra. “Even though I looked up to him at first, Brian was down to earth. He also really worked hard,” Mack said. “He was one of those guys who never missed practice. I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I didn’t go to practice myself.”

“It sucked,” Kelly said. “Snow would be on the runway. Ice would be in the box, and we had to chip it out. We would have our snowmobile mittens on, long Spandex pants, layers of clothes, jackets. We’d throw the jackets and mittens off then run down the runway and vault. We could at least stay warm by vaulting and running around, but Ralph couldn’t.”

The film study was part of it, too. It plays a huge role in the pole vault today in correcting more serious flaws as well as slight technical glitches.

Tim would come to think of his tactics as his greatest strength. “To be a good pole-vaulter, you have to be a student of the event,” said Kelly. “Even if somebody is telling you something that you know is wrong, listen to him. You might be able to apply it in a different way to yourself.”

If things had turned out differently, Kelly might have had the big career, not Mack. His coach knew how good he was. “Brian got married, and the kids started coming along,” Schreiber said. “But it gets in their blood. Brian is still competing. He has mats in his backyard. He sells poles.”

In 2003 Kelly won the open pole vault competition at Ohio State’s Jesse Owens Classic, adapting on the fly, using every trick he learned on the wind-blown, frost-flecked runways of his past. “There must have been a 20-mile-per-hour crosswind blowing,” he said. “I compensated by starting two feet off the runway and letting it blow me onto it.”

You could also see the Ohio State kids wondering what in the name of galloping senility Kelly was up to. “I’m sure they thought, ‘What’s this old fart doing?’” Kelly said. “Well, getting over a bar is what he was doing. My last jump was my best jump, and I won because I was the only one to clear a bar.”

By the end, one of the Buckeyes’ vaulters was starting on the side too, playing the wind. He almost made it.

Nothing matters but setting the bar higher. By the time he left Malone, Tim Mack was riding the bent pole ever higher, heading for the other end of the rainbow.

Slightly more than a mile from the entrance of Malone College, the football-shaped roof of the Pro Football Hall of Fame juts into the sky like the kickoff of a game not even NFL Films can blow out of proportion. From pro football’s crude pioneers to the stars of, seemingly, only a few minutes ago, the NFL scrupulously honors its legends. It isn’t like that at Malone College. Today, the weathered yellow brick of Osborne Hall has little to indicate that an Olympic gold medalist once learned his trade inside it. The All-American plaque and his name on a list of school records are the only mentions of his name. The school displayed stories about Mack’s victory in Athens for a time but later removed them.

Most schools love for their name to be mentioned by the media, unless it’s in connection with the word “violations.” But in the gym, none of the twenty-four banners and signs commemorating Malone’s success mentions Mack. Of course, he didn’t graduate from the school. Still, he has to be the greatest name ever to have walked its hallways and certainly the greatest to have used its gym.

Mack headed south to SEC track power: the University of Tennessee. He resisted talk of Signs From Above when he was leaving Malone after three years (counting the red-shirt year) and heading to Tennessee. He called it simply a “gut feeling.” “Ralph thought it was a smart move for me to move on to a higher level and so did Brian,” said Mack, who diligently began writing NCAA Division I schools.

He sent fifteen to twenty letters out, and the Volunteers were the first to get back to him. Schreiber knew Vols pole vault coach Jim Bemiller well from the Ohio high school ranks. Bemiller was a vaulter at Miami University and a native of Mansfield in central Ohio. He thought “B”—as Bemiller had been known since his days of wearing a single-initialed letter jacket in high school—and Mack would be a good match. It takes a high level of altruism for a coach to send an NAIA All-American elsewhere at an obvious cost to his own program.

“But Ralph knew Bemiller had some good pole-vaulters and knew what he was doing,” Kelly said. “Ralph might not always say the politically correct thing for a coach, and he might not always do the best thing for the school, but for the athletes, he was great. For Tim to have gone to Malone was absolutely the right choice. Ralph might not be the best coach, but nobody cares more than Ralph.”

A matter-of-fact Schreiber said his prize pupil needed to vault year-round, which was clearly impossible in Ohio. Schreiber also noted that Mack had outgrown Malone’s facilities. The bleachers, with those easily accessible rafters, were near the Osborne Hall pole vault pit. Mack often saw them out of the corner of his eye as he practiced. He also saw the huge air-conditioning units that hang just below the roof in each corner of the gym. When the sunlight poured through the windows at the end of the gym, a vaulter on that short runway could see only sky and the rumbling vents, only promise and menace. “I never got as close to them as Brian Kelly, but I always worried about hitting them,” Mack said.

“About 18 feet or so was the most they could clear in there,” Schreiber said. “There just wasn’t a lot of room. But we would fool around and set the bar at the world record, and they each would take three jumps at it. They got to where they could kick it off.”

When Mack visited Tennessee, it was midsummer, and next to nobody was on campus. “I knew I was going there, just like I knew I was going to Malone,” Mack said. “I left a lot of friends, but, just like at Malone, I got into another good group with some more terrific friends.”

Mack and Kelly were driving back from the Earl Bell meet in Arkansas before Tim transferred to Tennessee in 1993, leaving on a Saturday, one day early, because Tim had to be on campus in Knoxville by Monday. “The song ‘Pray for Me’ by Michael W. Smith came on the radio, as we were driving back to Malone,” Kelly said. “Tim and I liked to sing along. But the lyrics really hit us that day.”

Although not a big Christian music fan, Mack was singing a song that became the next part of his life story. The song is about new starts, using a fork in the road as its metaphor. Mack would take, literally and figuratively, the highway.

“I was already going to Tennessee, so I don’t know if I considered the song a sign,” said Mack. “But it was definitely one of those gut feelings.”

It’s a song about the love of friends and God’s love. It’s about memories, like the Stupid Human Tricks, the ride down from the rafters, the dunks, the laughter, the bonding. It is about making new memories. It’s about letting go and exploring.

Again, Mack was about to go outside the comfort zone.