WHERE ARE THEY NOEW?: TIM POLTL : Recounting the Struggle of Hitting New Heights : Former Alemany High Jumper Failed to Duplicate Stunning 7-Foot Marks Away From Home Track

When Tim Poltl jumped, people asked “how high?” and sometimes followed with “how come?”

In the spring of 1979, Poltl, a 6-foot-4, 187-pound senior high jumper for Alemany High, was the talk of local track and field because of his surprising ability and puzzling inconsistency.

Seven times during the season, Poltl, whose best jump as a junior was 6 feet 7 inches, cleared 7 feet, including an astonishing leap of 7-3 in April to set the best mark in the nation at that point in the season. The jump was only 1 1/4 inches shy of the then national high school record set by Gail Olson of Sycamore, Ill., in 1978.

“I knew I would jump 7-3 today,” Poltl told a reporter afterward. “And that’s what I was telling everyone.”

Poltl could not possibly have imagined that day that his best jumps were behind him.

Poltl, 31, who today works as an electrician and lives with his wife and two sons in Concord, Calif., near Berkeley, never again flirted with 7-3.

In fact, except for a 7-0 jump three weeks after his 7-3 leap, Poltl never again cleared 7 feet--not as a member of the U. S. Junior Olympic track and field team in 1979, not as a freshman at California and not as a sophomore at College of Alameda, a junior college in the Bay Area.

Yet Poltl, who says he hasn’t attempted a jump since 1981, the year he dropped out of college, has no regrets--except, perhaps, that he did not pursue basketball with the same vigor as high jumping.

“High jumping got me places I wouldn’t have gone,” Poltl said.

Throughout his senior year, Poltl received “boxes and boxes” of recruiting letters, most from Oregon State, Cal and USC. He was featured as athlete of the week on a local television news program, and photographs of an airborne and horizontal Poltl repeatedly graced local sports pages.

All eyes were on Poltl when he began his stride toward the bar.

Bernie Kyman, then Alemany’s athletic director and baseball coach, recalled that games came to a halt while the heads of infielders and umpires turned to watch Poltl jump.

“Everybody wanted to watch Timmy jump when the bar got up there,” Kyman said. “It was an exciting time.”

And frustrating.

Despite posting his third consecutive Santa Fe League championship, Poltl, a favorite to win a state championship, barely qualified for the Southern Section Masters meet and failed to qualify for the state championships.

Even worse, Poltl became the reluctant center of controversy because he made all of his seven-foot jumps at Alemany while sometimes falling embarrassingly short at other meets.

“At the time, everybody always mentioned that,” Poltl recalled. “I don’t know. It just seemed that whenever I was at an away meet I always had a hard time getting my steps just right. There were a couple of meets when I got way over the bar, but I would just nick it with my foot and . . . “

Poltl’s 7-3 leap came April 4 in a double dual meet against St. Genevieve and Pater Noster. Poltl cleared seven feet for the third time that season, then followed with three more jumps greater than seven feet.

Why so high? To this day, Poltl can’t explain.

“I just had a really exceptional year,” Poltl said. “I always thought I was just overachieving. Of course, I never let on because I was being recruited heavily. When you’re 18 years old and everything’s going a million miles an hour, it’s hard to concentrate.”

Perhaps too hard. After his 7-3 jump, Poltl competed in four meets, all at sites other than Alemany.

He jumped 6-6 at Cathedral, 6-8 at the prestigious Arcadia Invitational, 6-6 1/4 at the St. Paul Relays and 6-8 to place second at the Mt. San Antonio College Relays.

Frank Schiefer of San Diego Madison placed first at Mt. SAC with a jump of 6-10. Poltl failed three times at that height.

A few days later, Poltl cleared 6-10 in a league dual meet at Alemany, his best jump since 7-3. Three days later, he jumped 7-0, again at Alemany.

Soon, people began to question the runway, the surface and even the officiating at Alemany. Kyman, now a teacher at Littlerock High, defended the legitimacy of Poltl’s jumps then, and he stands his ground today.

“People were questioning the authenticity and that’s one reason I’d go down and watch him jump,” Kyman said. “I wanted to put my reputation behind that.

“No one ever complained about the runway at Alemany, and in the six years I was there, nothing was ever changed at the pit. No one else had exceptional jumps at Alemany the way he did. And I would say that other kids probably did not have their personal records jumping at Alemany.”

Kyman reasoned that Poltl simply was more comfortable at his home track and before familiar faces. Soon, however, “the eyeballs were on him,” Kyman said, and Poltl noticeably began to struggle.

“When I was at other tracks, the explosion was there and the jumps were there, but it just never happened,” Poltl said. “Sometimes, by the third jump or so, you don’t give it that great of effort.”

Perhaps the answer was in the tracks at other schools. Surfaces at Pater Noster and Cathedral, by Poltl’s recollection, were less-than-ideal dirt surfaces not conducive to good liftoffs. Alemany’s surface was asphalt with a thin rubber surface.

Poltl qualified for the Masters meet only after winning a jump-off against Rio Mesa’s Danny Smith at the Southern Section finals at Cerritos College. He advanced as the ninth and final qualifier for the Masters meet with a jump of 6-8.

At the Masters meet, Poltl managed only a 6-8 jump. His mark of 7-3 was bettered by Glendale’s Lee Balkin, who jumped 7-3 1/4 to win the state meet.

In the summer following graduation, he traveled to Mexico City with the Junior Olympic team (athletes 19 and under), recording a best jump of 6-9 1/2.

At Cal, Poltl suffered from sore knees and what he considered improper conditioning. His best jump was 6-8 1/2. His teammates’ jumps were higher.

“My confidence was kind of low,” Poltl said. “By the middle of the year, we had a meet at UCLA’s Drake Stadium and the bar was at 6-10. In three attempts, I was over it each time by six inches, but I just clipped it with my foot.”

After one year, Poltl was told he could no longer be provided a full scholarship at Cal. He spent a year at Alameda, recording a best jump of 6-10, before leaving school to become an electrician.

Poltl has since kept both feet on the ground. But he often entertains the idea of getting them both over the bar again.

Local tracks often sponsor all-comers meets. And Poltl said he always is aware of when they take place. “I’ve thought about jumping,” he said. “But there are not too many opportunities to do it. I really should go down there.”