Bowling’s High Level of Success Makes Up for Shortages at SCC : Track and field: Southern California College doesn’t have a well-stocked program. But high jumper is doing just fine.

As a high jumper for Southern California College, Eddie Bowling has a distinct disadvantage: the college doesn’t have any high-jump equipment.

But track and field wasn’t what attracted Bowling to SCC--he didn’t even know there was a team--so he isn’t complaining.

He barely has time to practice anyway, because of more pressing responsibilities.

“I’ve had a year full of prior commitments,” Bowling said. “I served as an resident assistant in the dorms, got engaged and had a full load of classes. These things took up a great deal of time.”

He figures he worked out an average of once a week and managed to practice on the nearby Orange Coast College high jump pit three or four times all season.

The training regimen of champions it isn’t.

“I was never able to be fully out there but as it turned out I jumped the highest the weeks I didn’t practice at all,” Bowling said. “It’s not an intentional style of training though.”

It has, however, produced remarkable results. Bowling won the NAIA District 3 title with a personal-best jump of 7 feet 0 1/4 inches. Saturday, he will aim higher at the NAIA national championships at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada.

Bowling’s chances are good--the winning mark last year was 7-0 1/2--and Bowling thrives in competition, SCC Coach Bryan Wilkins said.

“The majority of what he’s done is just off instinct from all the jumping he has done in the past,” Wilkins said. “I would think that most high jumpers who are jumping those kind of heights are doing a lot of work.”

Bowling’s potential was well recognized when he jumped 6-9 3/4 when he was in high school. He won a City Section championship as a junior at Canoga Park High and after graduating accepted a partial scholarship to Louisville.

But Bowling didn’t have a good experience in Kentucky. The weather was cold and the workouts were tough and not designed with high jumpers in mind, he said.

His appetite doubled and he added 20 pounds of muscle to his 6-foot-1, 185-pound frame. That would be fine if he were a football defensive back, but his jumping suffered.

So he returned to California and enrolled at Santa Monica College. After the rigorous training at Louisville, Bowling slacked off, often skipping preseason practices.

“When I’m a month or two away from competition and I feel the pain of the weights in my muscles, I don’t correlate the agony with the victory,” Bowling said.

“I had the coach doubting my ability before the first meet because he said I hadn’t attended any practices, but I jumped 6-10 or 6-11--a PR--in the meet and that’s when I started the trend of not practicing.”

He eventually cleared 7-0 that season and was offered the chance to walk on at Cal State Northridge.

Bowling decided to go to Northridge and changed his mind when he felt a calling, “Sept. 11, 1991 at 10:05 p.m.” While serving as a counselor at a church youth convention, he got the message that “God was saying, ‘I want you to be a minister of my word.’

“God didn’t come down and talk to me but I did feel a tug in my heart.”

He was familiar with SCC because it is affiliated with his church, the Assemblies of God, and decided to enroll at the Costa Mesa campus.

Bowling had decided to give up high jumping so he could major in Biblical studies, but when he got to campus he discovered he didn’t have to quit track and field.

Because of his other commitments--and, he admits, his general disdain for pain--Bowling hasn’t been able to devote much time to practice. But Wilkins hasn’t pushed too hard.

“There are other things in his life that are priorities and they are getting the focus and the discipline,” Wilkins said. “Track is just something he’s doing for fun.”

But next year in his final season of eligibility, Bowling promises to change his training habits.

“No coach wants a guy who never comes to practice and is lazy during the preseason but (Wilkins) has been positive and that has totally helped me out,” Bowling said. “If he accepts me as that person, then I’m free to improve.”