Charter Oak High Jumper Soaring Now : Recovered Quickly From Poor Finish

High jumper Mark Wilson of Charter Oak High in Covina would just as soon forget about the way his sophomore track season ended last year.

After impressively winning the Sierra League title by clearing 6-10, Wilson was pointing toward another strong performance in the CIF Southern Section finals.

Only Wilson wound up disappointed in the CIF 3-A Division finals, missing three times at 6-6--a height that he had cleared consistently during the season--and failing to qualify for the CIF Masters meet.

It was only two weeks later, while competing for his club team in the Athletics Congress junior meet at UC Irvine, that Wilson came up with the leap he had been hoping for. He cleared 7-0 to establish a national record for his age.

Too late for the high school season but more than enough to stamp Wilson as one of the top prep high jumpers in the state.

With the 7-foot barrier behind him, the 17-year-old junior has loftier heights in mind this season.

Said Robert Bolton, Wilson’s coach at Charter Oak: “He’s ambitious and he thinks it’s realistic to go 7-3 or 7-3 1/2 this year, and he wants to get the national record next year. He can jump.

“His legs are getting stronger and he is starting to mature physically. There is no telling how far he can go.”

At a slender 6-2 and 155 pounds, Wilson doesn’t look strong enough to be a successful high jumper. But looks can be deceiving.

“He has an amazing ability to turn his body in an upward motion,” Bolton said. “He has an amazing liftoff.”

As for strength, Bolton thinks that will come with age and weight lifting: “I think in college he’ll go on an extreme weight-lifting program and improve his power.”

Wilson agrees that it is only a little more strength that is keeping him from surpassing 7-0 consistently.

“I’ve pretty much got a lot of the technique down. What I need now is to increase my strength. It’s not really as hard to learn as the technique. It just takes a lot longer to do. You have to be willing to work at it.”

Wilson does not mind work. He even takes a high-jump crossbar from school to work out at home.

He got hooked on the event in junior high school.

“It wasn’t like I was above the rest,” Wilson recalled. “It was just a lot of fun for me. The first time I did it was in junior high school and I did well. When I got to high school, I just wanted to try it again.”

Wilson was not an instant success in the event at Charter Oak but made considerable improvement toward the end of last season.

“During the year I was pretty competitive with a lot of people, but toward the end of the year it just hit me that I was going above the competition,” he said.

That is what made the performance in the Southern Section finals so disappointing for Wilson. It was his lack of big-meet experience, Wilson says, that played a key factor.

“Experience helps a lot but I always look back and think I could have done it,” he said. “It just didn’t work out. I think the pressure had something to do with it because two weeks later I had my 7-0 jump.”

Wilson thinks an extra year of seasoning will make a difference this time.

“I definitely think it will help a lot,” he said. “I’ve been to several large meets with the Southern California Roadrunners (his club team) and I think it’s getting easier to adjust to certain situations.”

An outstanding all-around athlete, Wilson has also been developing his skills outside the jump pit. Bolton said Wilson has displayed promise in the high hurdles and the quarter-mile.

“If he were trained to concentrate on it, he’d be a fine quarter-miler or hurdler,” Bolton said. “He ran a 51 (seconds) in the 440 as a sophomore and he didn’t train hard for it.”

He is also a pretty good basketball player, good enough to play for the varsity the last two seasons and become a part-time starter last year.

Wilson said basketball hones his skills as a high jumper: “It’s working everything I need for high jumping--short sprints and jumping.”

But Wilson is quick to downplay his ability in other sports.

“I think it’s probably best that I concentrate on high jumping,” he said. “I don’t think I can really be a college basketball player. High jumping is what I do best.”

That has made him a prime recruiting target of college scouts from Louisiana State, Colorado State, UC Irvine, Northern Arizona and Brown--and the list is growing.

Wilson does not figure to have difficulty qualifying academically. He has a cumulative 3.6 grade-point average and scored 4.0 last semester.

For Wilson, good grades and high-jumping run in the family. His twin sister, Kris, cleared 5-5 to win the Sierra League high jump last season and has a straight-A average.

“We practice a lot together and if we watch each other we can help each other,” he said. “We also have the same (club and school) coach so we know what to tell each other to look for.”

What he is looking for this season is more consistency as a jumper.

“If I can establish a pretty good consistency I would think that I could go higher,” Wilson said.

He is looking forward to reaching the CIF state meet this time, where he would probably be matched against another high jumper who has cleared 7-0--Tim Prince from Union High of Logan City.

But you will not catch Wilson thinking ahead to that.

“I’m going to try to concentrate on the first meets because if you don’t concentrate on them you get knocked out early.”

That is what Wilson has learned from an extra year of experience.