Anderson coaches vaulters to new heights

As a seventh-grader-to-be in Baker, Oregon, in the spring of 1949, Jim Anderson saw some high school kids pole vaulting at the high school track across the street from his house and immediately, as he puts it, “lost my heart to it.”

“When we moved to a place with a little acreage a short time later I would use a wooden rail from the corral to vault with because it’s all I could come up with,” he said.

Now, 56 years later, Anderson just completed his 42nd year of coaching high school track and field, a season that saw him take three of the four state qualifiers from the Capital Conference to the state meet in Eugene.

Morgan Mansker soared 13-feet-6-inches as the top finisher for the Sisters team to take third place among 3A vaulters.

In comparison, Anderson qualified for state in 1955 and cleared 11 feet on a steel pole — the one and only pole owned by the school — to finish 10th at the meet held in Corvallis.

“In those days we landed in a pile of sawdust,” said Anderson, “so you can imagine what the landing felt like.”

Anderson, 68, thought he had retired when he moved to Sisters in 1994, but by the spring of 1995 he was part of the Outlaws track coaching staff.

After graduating from Eastern Oregon State College he spent the vast majority of his teaching and coaching career at Clackamas High School, south of Portland. Originally a distance coach for the school’s cross country and track teams, he picked up the pole vault by default.

“By then, everyone was using fiberglass poles, which I had no experience with,” said Anderson. “I got to know Steve Norris the year he won the state pole vault title for Rex Putnam High School and asked him to teach me the rudiments of jumping with a fiberglass pole. He was happy to do so, and I have been coaching the event ever since.”

When Anderson began at Sisters there wasn’t much vaulting going on, but that has changed dramatically.

Until 2002, he also coached the long and triple jumpers. In fact, he has had four jumper win state titles in his tenure in Sisters including Cortney Ellis in the long jump, Nicolette Callan in the triple jump and Amy Cretsinger in both the long and triple.

Recently he has handed the job of coaching the other jumpers over to one of his former athletes, Alex Cretsinger.

“I have fully enjoyed my time in Sisters,” he said. “From the very beginning the Sisters kids have been wonderful children who are easy to coach and they have formed a habit of doing well at the state meet.”

Mansker says that there are a couple of things that he really appreciated about having Anderson as a coach.

“He shows infinite patience and wisdom as a coach because he is able to see the big picture and he really emphasizes the importance of having fun out there, which attracts a lot of kids to the event,” he said.

“It’s amazing that he can coach the event so well when he never had the chance to actually compete himself on a fiberglass pole, but he understands the event as well as anyone,” said Mansker.

Now working exclusively with vaulters, Anderson plans to continue for a number of years.

“I have seventh graders that I really look forward to working with when they come to high school,” he said. “I’ll stay with it as long as Ross (head coach Ross Kennedy) will have me.”

Anderson can rattle off the names of former athletes and their marks in rapid fire fashion and continues to relish the relationships he forms with the kids he works with.

“I still get a kick out of coaching, although I am a lot calmer than I used to be,” he said. “There is so much application to the rest of life that kids learn from athletics and I really like keeping in touch with kids after they graduate to see how they are doing.”