High-Achiever Pearson Clears the Bar Easily

Bridget Pearson of Hoover High has a superb sense of balance.

Not only is she defending state champion in the girls’ pole vault, she is also an excellent student with a 3.9 grade-point average, a member of her school’s student government and an accomplished musician who plays the piano and the Celtic harp.

“She’s active in a lot of things,” Hoover track and field coach Greg Switzer said. “She has a lot of things going on in her life which is great to see . . . She wants to do well in the pole vault and she works hard at it, but if she couldn’t vault, she’d have plenty of things to fall back on.”

Pearson, a 5-foot-10 junior who will compete in the high school portion of the L.A. Invitational indoor track meet at the Sports Arena today, was a gymnast from the time she was three until she outgrew the sport at age 12.

She took up the pole vault in 1995 after becoming interested in the event while attending the Sunkist Invitational and the Mt. San Antonio College Relays in 1994.

“It just looked like so much fun,” Pearson said. “I told my dad that I wanted to learn how to do that. He said, ‘That’s usually a man’s event, but I’ll see what I can do.’ ”

Pearson’s conversion to the pole vault came at a good time.

The pole vault had been part of the men’s Olympic track program since the modern Games began in 1896, but women didn’t start competing in the event until the early 1990s.

Until then, it was theorized that women and girls lacked the required upper-body strength to compete in the event. That has been proved wrong.

The women’s world record has risen from 14 feet 1 1/2 inches in 1995 to 14-7 1/4 in ’96 to 14-11 last year. The national high school record is 13-1 3/4 and Pearson vaulted 12 feet to win the state meet.

Talent at the high school level has also risen dramatically.

In 1994, only one girl in the U.S. cleared 11 feet. Five did it in ‘95, then 21 in ’96 and 36 last year.

“There has been a drastic change in the quality of the fields,” Pearson said. “When I was starting out, if you could clear a height, you were a decent vaulter. Now if you clear 6 feet or 6-6, it’s a nice starting height, but you need to go a lot higher to get noticed.”

Pearson first attracted attention with her vaulting when she was an eight-grader at Toll Junior High in Glendale.

That’s when she came under the tutelage of Anthony Curran, an assistant track coach at UCLA and the 1977 and ’78 state champion in the pole vault for Crespi High.

Curran, who is also a club coach, guided Pearson to a best of 10-10 in 1995, a height which would have tied her for sixth on the national high school performer list that year.

She improved to 11-8 as a Hoover freshman and placed second in the 1996 state championships before winning the state title last year.

Those marks made Pearson the national freshman and sophomore record-holder, but she isn’t resting on her laurels.

Thirteen feet is her goal this season and she lists several areas where she can improve.

“I want to get faster, leaner and stronger,” she said. “I want to get more vertical in my jumping. . . . Right now, my coach says I have a tendency to do the flagpole thing. I shoot out away from the pole as I rise up instead of rocking back and going straight up as I go toward the bar.”

Curran cannot talk about Pearson because NCAA rules prohibit coaches from discussing athletes they might recruit during their senior seasons.

Winning another state title would increase Pearson’s stock among college recruiters, but it’s not an end-all goal for her.

“There are so many amazing vaulters out there that it’s hard for me to say that I’ll be disappointed if I don’t win state,” she said. “I won it last year, but that’s because I was the best vaulter on that day. That’s really what it comes down to. Who’s the best vaulter on that particular day.

“If you have an off day, you’re not going to win state, but that doesn’t mean you had a bad season.”

Pearson’s competitive outlook might be attributed to her parents, Christopher and Kathy, who have been careful not to pressure her into athletics.

“She’s enjoying the [pole vault], but I don’t want to push her one inch beyond what she enjoys,” said her father, a 60-foot shotputter for Ireland in the late 1960s. “I just want her to do her thing. When she was younger, she was into gymnastics and in the years ahead she might be into something else. But right now, she’s into track.”

Bridget also plays volleyball and water polo for Hoover, but track is the sport she dreams about competing in internationally--and not necessarily for the U.S.

She could also compete for Ireland, where her father was born. She has dual citizenship.

“It’s something that I’ve thought about,” Pearson said. “It would definitely be easier to make an Irish team than a U.S. one.”

Until that time comes, Christopher Pearson envisions his oldest daughter leading a balanced life on and off the track.

“She’s a curious mixture of being an easy-going relaxed person and a laser,” he said. “I call her a laser because she’s able to focus on fine details.

“She has enormous focus. That’s why she excels in things like calculus.”

And the pole vault.