Danger

The flowers come every year in February. Ed Dare is grateful February is the shortest month. He couldn’t stand any more of it.

The Dare house sits in a development in Port Matilda in central Pennsylvania that you reach by a two-lane road that twists and turns around the flank of the Appalachians. The wooded foothills were snow-covered on the last weekend in February 2005, and the sun was playing peek-a-boo with the clouds. Winter doesn’t let go easily in Port Matilda—located just a slalom run from State College, the home of Penn State University—especially in February.

Ed Dare sat in the den of his two-story brick home, surrounded by mementos of what he had lost. “This is a tough week. This week was three years,” he said. “It’s always a tough week. The whole kitchen is solid flowers. So many people from around the country remember Kevin, remember that day three years ago.”

On February 23, 2002, in the Big Ten Indoor Track and Field Championships in Minneapolis, Kevin Dare became possibly the most accomplished pole-vaulter ever to die in the event. He was nineteen years old. Making his first jump at 15 feet, 7 inches (4.75)—a height that seemed to pose no problem, for he had cleared 17 feet two weeks before the meet in practice—Dare went up, but his forward momentum stopped at the peak of his jump. He came down on the wrong side of the bar, slamming his unprotected head against the steel vault box.

“I didn’t like to talk to him before a meet,” said Ed. “But I’ll never forget what he said to me: ‘Dad, this is going to be my day.’”

Kevin, a Penn State sophomore, had the fifth-best jump in the Big Ten his sophomore season, and he thought he could medal in the conference meet.

“Everything looked good,” said his father, who had helped coach him for the six years Kevin had pole-vaulted. “The plant was good, but he was a little under [too close to the box] on the takeoff. The invert was good. But the pole shot him straight up. I’ve heard so many stories about what happened. I’ve heard he landed headfirst. Well, he landed on his back, half in the pads and half in the box.”

Pole-vaulters, in the top-gun slang that characterizes their world, call it “stalling out.” It can be caused by poor takeoff or by gripping the pole too high.

Ed and his wife Terri always went to Kevin’s meets. First to last.

“I was down there before the paramedics, and I saw the blood. That’s when I knew he was in trouble,” Dare said.

Medical personnel tried to pull the parents away. Dare remembers hearing someone say, “He’s his father,” and then they let him through. Track officials kept Terri Dare from getting close enough to see.

“I never left his side,” Ed said.

The dry language of the autopsy describes a massive wound and determined the cause of death being head injuries caused by a fall from height. Ed made a wish, like a man who had seen a falling star. “I know I can’t bring Kevin back, but I don’t want another pole-vaulter or another family to go through what we went through,” he said. “When I talk to people in pole vaulting, I say, ‘Take advantage of me. I have been through this. I know what hell is like.’”

If the Dares had their way, it would be the day that changed the pole vault. Ed Dare calls himself the “Ralph Nader” of the sport, after the consumer advocate. He has nothing at stake but safety, he said, no position in the sport, no endorsements. As a direct result of his emotional crusade for safety measures, the landing pit is now bigger. The optimum landing area is painted on the pads, so the jumpers have a target. There is a “soft box,” padded by space-age shock absorption material, which largely came to be manufactured for the sport on Dare’s initiative. The base of the standards is now padded. Dare said, when he first tried to do that, he had to use pads taken from volleyball standards. No one in track and field manufactured them for the pole vault.

From 1983 to 1997, thirteen high school pole-vaulters died and seven others incurred catastrophic injuries. Two high school pole-vaulters and Kevin Dare died in 2002. In April 2008, high school pole-vaulter Ryan Moberg died after striking the box with his unprotected head in Walla Walla, Washington. In March 2005, a Penn State pole-vaulter broke his arm. In the World Championships in Helsinki in the summer of 2005, Finnish vaulter Matti Mononen snapped off a part of the measuring equipment on one of his misses during qualifying. Later in the prelim, Chinese pole-vaulter Liu Feiliang landed on a plastic chair by the side of the track, breaking one of his legs. As ever, it is dangerous up there.

But the pole vault has been dangerous since it was invented. So has training for it. Brian Sternberg of the University of Washington owned the world record at 16–8 (5.08 meters) in 1963 in the infancy of the fiberglass pole. He was twenty years old. An All-American gymnast, Sternberg fell headfirst while doing trampoline exercises and broke his neck. The permanent paralysis that resulted made Sternberg, who many considered to have a chance to clear 17 feet and perhaps far beyond, the sport’s lost boy—its biggest example of what might have been.

Even today, there are virtually no pole vault–specific helmets in use, although they are on the market now at a cost of slightly less than $100 each. The Ralph Nader of the sport thinks that the lack of a helmet makes pole-vaulting unsafe at any height.

“All I hear are two things: A helmet might impede progress, and it might give them a false sense of security and cause them to be more aggressive,” Dare said. “Vaulters also worried that if they set a world record, it wouldn’t be recognized [because of the soft box]. But Sergey Bubka himself was in charge of testing the soft box. The IAAF now certifies it.”

By 2008, six states mandated helmets for high school jumpers; Washington state was not one of them. Minnesota did so only weeks after Kevin Dare’s death. The national pole vault safety governing body has yet to certify any helmet. “The same old fraternity, the good old boy network of about fifteen people, runs pole vaulting in the United States,” Dare said.

The pole vault is the most dangerous school sport in America. It has had more catastrophic (fatal or permanently disabling) injuries, per capita, than any sport, including football. An estimated 25,000 high school athletes pole-vault. Over 90,000 athletes are involved at all ages. It is an X Game in spikes. The heights are so much greater than in the high jump, the other vertical jump, that the pole vault could be called track and field’s Gravity Game. The pole, even after a successful vault, can travel under the crossbar and strike pole-vaulters in the armpit, the face, or the shorts. “I have seen some big-time scars,” said Jim Bemiller.

“If I had the chance to turn back the clock, I would do it totally different,” Ed Dare said. “No one disclosed to us how dangerous it is.”

“We never thought of it as a type of extreme sport,” said Terri Dare. “It’s not mountain climbing. It’s not stepping in front of a bus. People are supposed to get up. People are supposed to survive.”

The pole vault attracts the young and can encourage the reckless. They get out on the edge, where they unfasten the tethers of caution and fear, and they can flame out like Icarus. It is simply not a buckle-your-seatbelts sport. Stacy Dragila, the first female to win an Olympic gold medal in the pole vault, goes to her workouts each day with the cryptic motto “5MODT” written on her training sheet. It means “Five Meters [16–4¾] Or Die Trying.”

“I understand her thinking,” Ed Dare said. “My son died at the Big Ten Indoors. In those circumstances, you’re maxed up. It’s a violent sport. They have a responsibility to make it as safe as possible.”

Said Bob Fraley, the coach at Fresno State, as well as the coordinator of the pole vault for USA Track and Field: “The element of risk is what people love in our sports culture. It is why NASCAR has gone out of sight. But that might have to change.”

“We relish the daredevil image and reckless behavior. But we really can’t. This event won’t allow you to do that,” said Greg Hull, the coach of 2000 Olympic gold medalist Nick Hysong.

“There is a neglect factor,” said Bemiller. “We have short [track] seasons in the Midwest. Few high school coaches have actually vaulted. Put that combination together and kids are thrown out there to compete too soon.”

The pole vault is also a very expensive sport. This can lead struggling school districts to scrimp on equipment. World-class poles cost $500 each. Landing pits can be an enormous investment, running well over $10,000. They must be scrupulously maintained.

“The successful vaulters often get their fathers involved. You need good equipment. Good poles are expensive. You need good coaching. It sort of skews to high school districts with a strong middle-class base,” said Bemiller.

The development of synthetic fibers to be used in poles in the 1970s took the event to new heights, for all that it also led to the regrettable creation of polyester leisure suits. With greater heights came greater risks. But “Stayin’ Alive” was not supposed to be about the pole vault.

There are several components to a successful pole vault. The Dares and pole vault officials differ on what happened on many of them at the 2002 Big Ten Indoor Championships.

Practice: Rules changes have outlawed “tapping” at all levels. When a pole-vaulter taps, it means another competitor or a coach gives a boost to a pole-vaulter in practice. Usually, it is in the form of a push in the back as the vaulter nears the box to increase speed. It creates a false sense of ability.

Ed Dare is adamant that Kevin was not “getting a tap” in Minneapolis. However, Jan Johnson, bronze medalist in the 1972 Olympics and chairman of the committee of pole vault safety in the USA since 1994, said, “I have at least ten witnesses that Kevin Dare was tapping that day. They say he was jumping well and penetrating deep into the pits. Well, yeah. With a tap.” Johnson decried an “epidemic” of tapping in American colleges and universities before Dare was killed.

Size of Pole: Poles are calibrated for a competitor’s weight. Using one not designed to carry a competitor’s body weight is illegal for high school and AAU pole-vaulters. Johnson wants to make it illegal at all levels. The rule has curtailed many of the injuries that once resulted from snapping poles and the deadly shrapnel they created. “It is like a concussion grenade going off in your hands, like the mother of all fastballs on your fists on a cold day,” said Tim Mack, who has only broken one pole.

Pole-vaulters learn to somersault into the landing pit when a pole snaps. Toby Stevenson, Mack’s top rival in 2004, safely “ejected” from a shattered pole in such a manner in 2005.

“I think it all goes back to mental approach,” said Hull. “Young kids in college and high school think, ‘if I just try harder, if I just get on a bigger pole, I can please coach or please dad.’ You have to look at it and realize it demands a certain respect and attention.”

Grip: A higher grip means more leverage for a higher arc on the jump. It also can result in a shallower jump. A lower grip allows for deeper penetration into the pit. High school pole-vaulters can’t grip higher than pole manufacturers’ specifications. The only prohibition in the NCAA, USA Track and Field, and IAAF is that the pole-vaulter may not move the upper hand or raise the lower hand above the upper during the vault.

“Kevin Dare was holding too high on the pole, which caused his accident,” said Jan Johnson. “That caused him to get pushed on his back and not reach the pit.”

Kevin’s father, perhaps predictably in the charge/countercharge that has flared between the family and pole vault officials, said his son had been on that pole with that grip before.

Coaching: Kevin Dare’s vaulting coach, Tom Kleban, was confined to a wheelchair as a result of a teenage swimming accident. He was not with him in Minneapolis. That is not unusual in pole-vaulting. To a dismaying degree in such a dangerous sport, the pole-vaulters almost coach themselves.

Sergey Bubka advocates sound coaching over any other measures. “I would focus on coaching,” he said. “If you have good coaching, then there is no problem at all. It goes to the quality of the coaches and to learning proper techniques.”

Standards: Reports from Minneapolis said Kevin had set the standards close to the box, at 35 centimeters (1 foot, 1¾ inches), leaving very little margin for error between the box and the bar. New NCAA rules following Kevin’s death mandated that the standards not be closer than 45 centimeters (about 1–5¾). The NCAA and AAU use a 40-centimeter (1–3¾) minimum. There is no minimum setting in USATF and IAAF competitions. According to rules official Stanley Underwood: “Equipment permitting, the bar could be set directly over the top of the back of the plant box!”

Tim Mack never sets them nearer the box than 50 centimeters (1–7¾). By international track rules, they can be shifted from 30 centimeters (11¾ inches) to 80 centimeters (1–11½).

“The comments about Kevin setting the standards have been all over the place. Kevin’s roommate and fellow vaulter said they were at his normal settings,” said Ed Dare.

In news reports the day after Kevin’s death, Ed was quoted as saying 35 centimeters was close to Kevin’s usual position and that the setting did not contribute to his death.

Experience: Pole-vaulters between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one, college freshmen and sophomores, suffer the most catastrophic injuries. About 30 percent of all attempts are aborted in the Olympics, according to Greg Hull. He cites the figure as a tribute to the experience of the Olympians. He believes this shows they are savvy enough to bail out when they know the jump is unsafe. But in the 2004 men’s Olympic final, the very highest level of pole-vaulting in the world, Russia’s Pavel Gerasimov withdrew after taking off on the far right side of the runway, knocking off the bar at 18 feet, 6½ inches (5.65), and then landing flat on his back on the infield, missing the pit. In the women’s Olympic pole vault qualifying, Russia’s Anastasiya Ivanova landed awkwardly in the pits and broke her leg on a jump of 14–5¼ (4.40).

“Tim Mack has a notebook with him for a reason,” said Fraley, referring to the game plan Mack devised over many years that takes into account varying conditions, sizes of poles, and heights. “Tim looks at what he did the last two years, and then he takes the environment at the meet into consideration. A lot of people go out there with preconceived ideas of what pole they will be on at what height. But what if it’s raining? What if there’s a headwind? You’ve got to make adjustments.”

Ed Dare said his son was an analytical jumper. Others thought he was barely in control, according to Jan Johnson.

“There was only one Olympic-caliber athlete who was a free spirit and changed, only one associated with the pole vault—Toby Stevenson,” said Hull.

Stevenson seriously injured himself in Oslo in 2002 and was in the hospital for two weeks with a punctured lung.

“It is ballet but with violent impact. If you’re not careful, the pole vault will chew you up and spit you out,” said Bemiller.

According to a study by the Center for Catastrophic Sports Injuries at the University of North Carolina, the vast majority of fatalities and catastrophic injuries have resulted from landing behind or outside the pit.

The proposed safety measures have drawn mixed reviews.

Bigger Pits: The larger pits are universally applauded. Pole vault pits now should be no smaller than six meters (19–8¼) wide by five meters (16–4¾) long behind the box with front pads of two meters (6–6¾) extending to the front of the box. “We interviewed the people involved in catastrophic injuries from 1972 on, forty-seven cases,” said Johnson. “It took five years to run them all down. A lot of school districts wanted to wait until they got the proof before enlarging the pits.”

The Soft Box: “I’ve seen jumps off the soft box, and they’re great,” Bob Fraley said. “There’s nothing wrong with it. But it’s close to $2,000 for a soft box, and there are substantial other changes. You have to tear up the runway and tear out the old box, pour new concrete, and put rubber strips down to pad it. And it’s not just one box. It’s three or four in some places. If you’re building a new facility, by all means consider the soft box. For an older facility, it’s a huge amount of money.” Penn State was the first customer for the soft box.

For as little as $150, however, a box collar that uses the same force absorption technology can be fitted around the steel box.

“They’ve padded everything that can be padded. I think it has had a clear effect on reducing injuries,” said Bemiller.

Helmets: Dare rummaged in a cupboard and brought out a shiny black helmet. It is astonishingly lightweight at just over one pound (500 grams). The helmet has cutouts on the sides so as not to impede the pole-vaulter’s arms when he is planting the pole for takeoff. It is thinner over the forehead than at the rear. “No one lands on his forehead in the pole vault,” said Ed Dare. According to Dare, 97 percent of catastrophic injuries occur to the rear of the head.

The helmet was developed by a company called Enventys. Each helmet bears a small logo on its back, a white outline of a pole-vaulter planting a bending pole and lifting one foot off the ground, ready to fly. It’s the pole vault’s equivalent of the Michael Jordan symbol, in which “Air Jordan” is captured just after takeoff, legs scissored, the ball held like a cocked gun in one hand. The figure on the pole-vaulting helmet is modeled on a photograph of Kevin Dare in competition.

The helmet uses the same shock-absorption technology that a company named Skydex has patented for many applications, including playground equipment for children and boats used by the Navy SEALs. Tests show the cushioning technology makes a dramatic difference in absorption of force in comparison to naked steel boxes.

From as slight a distance as six inches, a pole-vaulter could die from his head hitting a steel box. It would take a fall of over 18 feet to generate such lethal force on a soft box.

In 2007 a pole-vaulting helmet was approved by the American Society of Testing and Materials but has not been mass-produced.

“The day Kevin died, we heard from three pole-vaulters who said they were quitting the sport,” Ed Dare said. “The pole-vaulting community wanted to say, ‘Golly, what a shame’ and then go on about life as before. Basically, without the national high school federations adopting the helmet, we won’t be safe at the learning level.”

“I’m not convinced,” said Fraley. “I’m concerned with flexion. What if a helmet on the head hits the pads and puts more torque on the neck?”

“I would rather be efficient and safe in my technique than use a helmet,” said Mack.

“If you pole-vault a long enough time, you will over-rotate and hit the pit more on your head and shoulders than on your hind end and back,” said Jan Johnson. “That happened three times to me. When that happens, your head gets pushed toward your chest, and it stretches the back of your neck a little bit. I question whether a helmet that adds 1 to 1½ more inches to the back of the neck wouldn’t create more leverage.”

“It’s a cop-out,” Dare said. “The people who run pole vaulting are bull shitters. Jan Johnson is a bull shitter. You can quote me on it. I call him the ‘Chameleon.’ One day, he’s for safety. The next day, he’s not.”

Then Ed Dare said: “Jan Johnson has a daughter who pole-vaults, and she doesn’t even wear a helmet,” he said.

Jan’s daughter, Chelsea Johnson, who holds the NCAA women’s record, does not wear a helmet because her father gave her that option.

Bob Richards, the two-time Olympic gold medalist, supports helmets. But they are damned in the eyes of young competitors for lack of cool.

“When I asked Kevin about using one, he told me Jeff Hartwig [the American record-holder] and the elite guys don’t wear one. And coaches don’t have the guts to mandate it,” said Ed Dare.

The argument that helmets are dorky is a weak one. As soon as the best player in ice hockey, Wayne Gretzky, put on a helmet a generation ago, the “cool” issue in that sport was resolved. Yet of all the elite pole-vaulters in the world, only Toby Stevenson wears a protective helmet. He did so when he began vaulting as a boy to soothe his mother’s fears. The flimsy roller hockey helmet he wears was never designed for the stresses of pole-vaulting, though. In 2007 the American Society of Testing and Materials approved a pole vault–specific helmet. No manufacturer has yet come forward to produce them to ASTM specifications.

The inescapable fact is that a mistake in the pole vault can be very costly. It is like what journeyman heavyweight boxer Randall “Tex” Cobb once said of his bloody craft: “If you make a mistake in tennis, it’s love-15. If you make a mistake in boxing, it’s your ass, darlin’.”

How does most of the pole-vaulting community see the accident that killed Kevin Dare—a freakish occurrence? Neglect of safety? Disorientation?

“The pole vault community looks on it as pilot error,” Fraley said.

Ed Dare considered suing. His attorney, Rob Sachs, advised against it. In his heart, Sachs felt extra protection would make pole-vaulters extra reckless. “It would make it a faster, harder, rougher sport, as has happened in hockey,” he said.

It is a feeling shared by Chico Kyle, Tim Mack’s high school coach. “It [a helmet] sort of leads them to think they’re invulnerable,” said Kyle.

Of the possibility for serious injury, he said: “It’s always in the back of your mind.”

Bemiller, Mack’s coach at Tennessee and afterward, thinks the problem is the increasing popularity of the pole vault in the extreme sports culture.

“The pole vault is not for everyone,” said Bemiller. “It takes a good overall athlete to handle the event, let alone compete well. The vaulter used to be one of the best overall athletes on the track team—good hurdler, good relay man, long jumper. Now it has become an attraction for the below-average athlete who likes the ‘trick’ side of the event. The kids need to know this is an intense thing. I tell the young college kids that there are no half-speed pole-vaults. You have to be in shape and focused enough to come down that runway full speed for twelve to fifteen times at practice, all out. I tell them it’s like tackling a running back in football. You better hit that guy like Ray Lewis or Dick Butkus, or he will run all over you. Be in shape and know what you are doing in the pole vault.”

Pole vault officials look nervously over their shoulders at the Dare family. “This whole issue is a political hot-potato,” said one internationally known pole vault coach. “That father could sue and bury us if he wanted to.”

Ed Dare smiled bleakly. He is used to being painted as a zealot, a crusader, a man out to save pole-vaulting by destroying it. It is, he said, a distortion.

Terri Dare stood near his desk, wiping her eyes with Kleenex and sobbing softly. To her side was a picture of Eric, their older son. Next to it was one of Kevin. On the opposite wall, framed, was a Penn State track singlet in dark blue and white, as simple and unadorned as the uniforms of Joe Paterno’s football team.

“I’ve heard that I’m against pole-vaulting and that economic reasons and insurance could mean the end of the event. Why would I try to put the pole vault out of commission?” said Dare. “Kevin loved pole-vaulting. He would haunt me every day if I did that.”

This argument often boils down to dry statistics, to impact velocity in tests, to arguments over the thickness of the back of the new helmet and its effect in possibly hyper-extending pole-vaulters’ necks. But to see what is at stake in the safety debate, you have to move beyond the numbers. You have to drive the road in central Pennsylvania that hugs the hills, to the house with the funeral parlor of a kitchen. To give an abstract debate a human face, you would have had to meet Kevin Dare, who was always smiling.

In the slightly esoteric sport of pole vaulting, at a place like Penn State, where there is football and then there is everything else, Kevin Dare was George Bailey of It’s a Wonderful Life. He touched so many people’s lives. The place would have been immeasurably poorer without him. Kevin didn’t need a lot for his ego and never was really into himself. His pickup truck, his country music, the track uniform he wore when he went through the launch window on a spindly pole—they mattered. So did people, all kinds of people.

“He was always for the underdog,” Ed said. “Always.”

He was the reigning U.S. national junior champion in 2002. A fierce competitor, he had won a memorable storm-tossed, weather-beaten high school state championship just two years earlier for State College Area High School. That day at Shippensburg State, the boys were pole-vaulting in a downpour, Ed will tell you in exasperation. Kevin almost no-heighted his first bar in the crossfire of wind and rain, but officials wouldn’t move the event inside. “It was a monsoon, but they said some of the jumpers only had shoes for outside. So let’s continue when it’s unsafe,” Dare said.

Kevin managed to squeeze the best jump of the day between the raindrops. In a framed photograph that rests on a shelf behind his father’s desk, Kevin stands on the highest point of the victory podium, flanked by the rivals over whom he had flown. Umbrellas bloom in the hands of the spectators standing behind them like mushrooms sprouting in a marshy field. The bronze medalist was Kevin’s great friend and rival, Dave Bollinger, who went on to vault at Penn State.

“Dave fell in the box that day and was hurt too badly to continue vaulting. He still finished third,” Ed Dare said.

It was Bollinger who arranged for the Nittany Lion singlet to be given to the Dare family.

In sports, everything is quantified. Box scores in baseball and basketball are dense with figures. In track, every footrace is timed down to the runners’ reaction time to the starter’s pistol. In the field events, the jumps and the throws, every effort is scrupulously measured down to the last centimeter. Adversity is usually the template sports applies. How does an athlete perform when up against it? How does he cope when the weather is mean and surly enough to be slashing the Lake Erie shoreline in Cleveland? But it was the quality of humility that was the measure of Kevin Dare.

As a pole-vaulter, his mission was to rise above hard times. As a country music fan, one of his favorite songs was Toby Keith’s “What Do You Think of Me Now?” The remarkable thing about his death is that the loss touched so many people from all walks of college and high school life. They all thought so highly of him. Jocks and nerds are usually segregated as completely as if there were some system of apartheid in effect, one based on muscle fibers and barbells. Kevin Dare was a good ol’ boy, but he was comfortable outside the circle of team and family. He always included outsiders.

“When he was a little boy, he literally would not let us kill a caterpillar,” Ed said. “He made us pick it up off the sidewalk.”

“I don’t think he even wanted us to kill flies,” said Terri Dare.

In some ways, counting team managers as friends and easing the way for lowly freshmen when he was a senior football captain in high school made him as defiant of conventions as his daredevil brethren. Jumping off high places is something of a tradition in the pole vault. But when you land, you walk the same ground everyone else does.

Kevin didn’t think the big air inflated him into someone bigger than life. Kevin Dare saw every caterpillar as a butterfly in the making. He once studied with another student until 3:30 in the morning, even though he didn’t take the class, trying to ensure she didn’t fail. He made sure to include little brothers and friends of friends in his conversations. He gave rides in the pickup truck to the manager of the State College Area High football team. “He was always there when you needed him, like a knight in shining armor. His armor was his old brown Ford pickup, and his blade was his pole, and that’s how I’ll always remember him,” wrote Kun R. Anderson, State College High, Class of 2001, on an Internet tribute page to Kevin.

Kevin gave polite compliments to economically deprived kids who didn’t have the money for the latest clothes. He shared a headset with a friend, each with one headphone pressed to his ear, the two arm-inarm, laughing and dancing in the aisle of the bus on the way to Lehigh University and an indoor meet.

Perhaps the most affecting comments came from a rival, Brian Mondschein, a Hershey, Pennsylvania, pole-vaulter who won the state indoor and outdoor championships a year after Dare had won it. Mondschein became a three-time All-American and NCAA outdoor runner-up as a vaulter at Virginia Tech. He religiously kept tabs on Dare’s marks in high school and exultantly told his parents the day he jumped five meters (16–4¾): “I finally caught up with him!”

It was February 23, 2002.

“When I found out what happened, I couldn’t believe it,” Mondschein wrote. “He loved it so much, and it killed him. He was definitely a role model. He was the top vaulter in Pennsylvania. I was always chasing his marks. Yet he always had time to talk to you.”

Mondschein’s father, a former pole-vaulter, started him in the event when he was 14. His grandfather, Irving “Moon” Mondschein, finished eighth in the 1948 Olympic decathlon. Despite such a rich athletic background, Brian Mondschein red-shirted in the outdoor season following Kevin Dare’s death.

“I was spooked,” he said. “I couldn’t get his death out of the back of my mind.”

He remembered a Rutgers pole-vaulter who landed on the box on his back and broke his hip. He remembered a Southern Illinois vaulter, Ray Scotten, who was knocked unconscious at the 2004 NCAA Championships. Scotten tripped in his final steps of the approach. He bent the pole as he stumbled, and the fiberglass slingshot fired him to the left of the pit, where he sailed over a six-foot-high fence and landed in the stands. He remembered Kevin Dare.

It’s dangerous up there, yet Mondschein resumed vaulting the next season. On the runway, he wears only the same style of skateboarding helmet he used as a beginner. “I feel comfortable in it,” said Mondschein.

In meets across the Big East Conference and in the NCAA Championships, Mondschein said he has never seen a soft box. “The area where Kevin fell in the box is still as hard as ever,” he said.

Kevin Dare was a respected name in “Happy Valley,” as the students call Penn State. It is “The Land That Time Forgot” in many ways. Joe Paterno has been on the football staff since 1950. He has been the head coach since 1966. He seems to have run the same predictable offense forever. Nothing seems to change there. But Kevin changed his fellow students’ hearts and minds.

“Be sure to go to the student bookstore,” Terri Dare said. “They did such a wonderful job.”

At the corner of College Ave. and Hiester St., across the street from the Penn State campus, a vast mural called Inspiration decorates an entire outside wall of the store. A local artist named Terry Pilato painted it and dedicated it to those who touched the lives of other people in Centre County, Pennsylvania. Painted just behind Jerry Sandusky, the long-time Penn State offensive coordinator in football, and near the great icon of Paterno himself is Kevin Dare. His pet ferret “Gizzy” (for “Gizmo”), which he smuggled into and out of his dorm room his entire freshman year, is perched on his shoulder. A gold medal dangles around his neck. On the mural, Kevin is blond-haired, 19 forever, eternally smiling, with a halo shining around his head.

“Kevin had an inspirational sign that read: ‘Your talent is God’s gift to you; what you do with it is your gift back to God,’” said Ed Dare. “So many times I’ve wanted to quit. Then I remember the caterpillar. Kevin was caring every day of his life.”

“I’ve been blessed with some wherewithal and some organizational ability,” he continued. “So I set up a foundation. I’m trying to get this to be self-sustaining so track programs can afford soft boxes and helmets.”

He hopes to make the Kevin J. Dare Foundation his martyred son’s legacy to the sport. A bittersweet smile flickered across Ed Dare’s face like the sun moving between the clouds on the icy day outside his window. “The IRS loves foundations,” Dare said, sarcastically. “I haven’t made any money on any of this. This has cost me money.”

He said he doesn’t understand the delays. “NASCAR had head restraints the season after Dale Earnhardt died,” he said. “The NHL put up its first nets sixty-five days after the young girl [thirteen-year-old Brittanie Cecil] was killed by a puck.”

Actually, it was the next season in the NHL.

But this is a black-and-white matter to Ed Dare. Right and wrong stand in as stark contrast as the colors of the pole vault helmet.

“I think ever since his son died, Ed Dare has tried to make everything right in pole vaulting. I think he really loved his son,” Jan Johnson said. “He’s done a little bit that’s good and a little bit that’s unwise. I think he has too much faith that the answers are the soft box and helmets.”

The pole vault community has stepped up its educational programming since Kevin Dare’s death. College coaches attend a pole-vault safety clinic before each season. Jan Johnson, noting his daughter’s online driver education class years ago, offers an online class. He has gone from one coach per day registering for it in 2003 to fifteen a day in 2005. It continues to grow.

Many in pole vaulting think Kevin Dare’s death accelerated the pace of rule changes to make the sport safer. But Ed Dare is a human searchlight. Until the standards quit looking like a gallows to him, until helmets are mandatory, he won’t be satisfied.

“The NHL and NASCAR were in the public eye, that’s why they changed,” he said. “In pole vaulting, it’s been six years now, and there haven’t been any more fatalities. Nothing is going to change until the first woman pole-vaulter dies. Then there is going to be an outcry like you won’t believe.”

The influx of women competitors has been crucial in pole vaulting. Even before the tragedies mounted at the start of the new century, the sport was often a victim of budget cuts. It was costly. It was not egalitarian, but instead skewed to rich districts. But pole vaulting would never be cut once it became a gender equity issue. In many ways, it has been saved by the very people who were thought to be too weak, and perhaps too susceptible to the vapors at the height of a jump, to do it.

The outcry Dare feared almost happened in 2001. Kelsey Koty, a female pole-vaulter at Eastern Washington University, veered to the right on her first jump as a collegian, hitting the bar and then the side of the pit. The pit was not compliant with specifications instituted after Kevin Dare’s death. She bounced off the pit and struck her head on the floor of the EWU field house. She was in a coma after suffering injuries that included an epidural hemorrhage, loss of smell, impairment of speech, and cognitive dysfunction. She spent three weeks in intensive care. She had two metal plates inserted into the back of her head where her skull had been fractured. Koty even had to learn to walk again. She never pole-vaulted again, although she did compete later as a long jumper.

Dare’s comment about a female fatality recalled her tragedy on the other side of the country while he still wrestled with his family’s greater one. His words hung like a prophecy of doom that pole vaulting wants to ignore. In another part of the house, dogs barked and young boys roughhoused. It is always that way in February, when the company comes calling, and the Dare house is, at once, both so full and so achingly empty.