Being Thirtysomething Doesn’t Slow Ellard : Rams: After being invited to Olympic trials as a triple jumper, receiver is entering his 10th season.

Sometimes it takes a leap of faith to bolster your desire to go on playing into your 30s. For Henry Ellard, it took a leap of 54 feet 1 inch.

Ellard, entering his 10th season in the league, put a little pride in his stride this off-season when he qualified to compete in the Olympic trials in the triple jump at that distance.

He failed to make it to Barcelona, failed to even mark in the finals because of a tender hamstring, but the experience seems to have proved for him, at least, that the spring in his legs just might be eternal.

“It felt good,” Ellard said of his Olympic trials experience. “Last year when I first started, when I found out I was eligible again, it was in the back of my mind, but I didn’t know what was going to happen--let me get out there and just see what happens.

“To qualify just made me feel good about myself. I’ve still got a little bit in my legs to be able to do something like that.

“At times, well, I wasn’t sure. It had been six years since I last jumped. It was, ‘Well, let’s go into this thing with a grain of salt and see what happens.’ And slowly but surely, it started to come back more and more, and I was pretty pleased with the outcome.”

After entering the competition in New Orleans last month not even hoping for a spot on the Olympic team, Ellard, who hadn’t competed in the event since college, said he slowly began to think he might have a shot.

“(At first) it was something beyond reality,” Ellard said. “But nobody really jumped well in qualifying, so it was like, ‘Well, maybe it’s not going to be too bad.’

“But once it got into the finals, everything changed. Except that third spot (on the Olympic team), that third spot anybody could’ve made it. It was just a matter of how well you were jumping that day.

“I didn’t have the idea that, ‘OK, I’m going to qualify and make the team and all that.’ I was just glad to go and experience it.

“I never did actually even get a mark. The first one was a foul and the second one was actually where I hurt my hamstring. So I stopped after that.”

Ellard really hasn’t started again. He is still nursing that sore hamstring in training camp and has been kept out of many drills. But with his NFL track record, the coaches know what he can do.

After nine seasons in the NFL, 485 receptions (a Ram record), 8,089 yards (another team record) and 43 touchdown receptions, Ellard might have needed a boost like the trials experience. Ellard just turned 31 at a position where age is no virtue.

“If I can stay free from serious injuries . . . the body doesn’t feel like it’s going into its 10th year, and I’m hoping I can keep it this way for a while.”

In 1991, Ellard led the Rams with 64 receptions for 1,052 yards--his fifth consecutive 50-plus reception season and his fourth consecutive 1,000-yard effort. Ellard and San Francisco’s Jerry Rice are the only two NFL receivers to have at least 1,000 receiving yards in each of the last four years.

How much longer does he want to go?

“I’ve told myself another four years,” Ellard said. “Four would be nice, and just play it by ear from there.

“It seems like everything’s there--especially the quickness. That’s what I rely on more than anything. As long as I can keep my quickness and keep myself in some kind of decent shape, I think I’ll be fine.”

Ellard and other veterans say they appreciate the new, strictly business practice style brought to the Ram training camp by Coach Chuck Knox. The practices are shorter (no longer than an hour and a half if they practice twice in a day, two hours if it’s a single-practice day), and the players run from drill to drill.

“It’s nice--a nice, brisk pace,” Ellard said. “There’s no dead time. You go from here to there and you’re doing everything and you get it done quickly and you’re off the field.

“Everything’s clockwork. You know, we’re not sitting around waiting for something. I think it helps us out--teaching us the discipline of being where we need to be at a certain time.”