School: William Tennent
Track & Field
Favorite athlete: Toby Stevenson (pro pole vaulter)
Favorite team: Flyers
Favorite memory competing in sports: “Winning the Indoor State Championship for V.E. soccer.”
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: “My friend’s shorts got stuck on his pole vault pole and then they were ripped off, and he landed in the pit in boxers.”
Music on iPod: Lil’ Wayne, Rise, Against, and the Never Back Down album
Future plans: “Vaulting through college and (majoring in) nursing/sports med”
Favorite motto/words to live by: “Set your goals high, and don’t stop until you get there.” Bo Jackson
“I will always be someone who wants to be better than others. I love competition.”
Jean-Claude Killy
One goal before turning 30: “Go to the Olympics and be a professional nurse”
One thing people don’t know about me: “I love space and the stars.”
By Nate Oxman
Pardon the pun, but Mick Coleman has set the bar pretty high.
Pardon the pun, but Mick Coleman has set the bar pretty high.
Sixteen feet to be exact.
That’s the mark the William Tennent High School junior would like to clear by the end of this season. He’s working as hard as possible to reach that goal and if, or maybe a better word choice would be when he makes it, he’ll just set the bar even higher.
That’s the attitude Coleman has maintained since he took the advice of a gymnastics coach and took up pole vaulting.
Coleman, a Southampton resident, was an eighth grader working out with his good friend, and now fellow pole vaulter, Pete Burns when a coach casually asked, “Why don’t you try the pole vault?” recalled Coleman. “I said, ‘Well, I’ve never even heard of that, but I’ll look it up.’ I looked it up and it looked crazy to I thought I should try it out.”
In the spring season of his freshman year Coleman was eager to compete in the event and put a season’s worth of vaults under his belt. He lasted about a week.
“I came out freshman year, and I probably wasn’t ready for high school,” said Coleman. “I was still deeply in the middle school mode and I came out for a week or so and I think I jumped in like one meet and cleared the opening height or something. And then I got the call from coach Fries to come down to his room.
“He said, ‘Listen, you’re academically ineligible. You have to get this together. This can’t be happening.’ I think it was a good thing because it really opened up my eyes to the fact that it’s not all about sports. You have to do it in the classroom first.”
Coleman gradually improved his grades during his sophomore year and returned to the track and field team that spring. But without a specialized pole vault coach, or even a track – Tennent’s track was being redone as part of the completion of the school’s new football stadium – Coleman enjoyed little success.
But after spending some time developing his skills with the prestigious Ambler Olympic Club and banking on his relentless pursuit toward perfection, Coleman set his sights on this past winter’s indoor season as a perfect way to prepare for a promising junior outdoor campaign.
But Coleman’s hopes were curtailed once again after separating his shoulder while performing a stunt during a powder puff football game just a few weeks before the winter season was set to begin.
A month and half later, following two weeks in a stabilizer and a few more in rehabilitation, Coleman returned to the track. He qualified for the state meet, but never felt comfortable and cleared just 13 feet.
“It ended up being a disappointment for me,” said Coleman. “Pete did very well. I think he placed fourth. But I was a little bit disappointed. I thought we were going to get a couple people from western Pennsylvania who were going to get at least 15 [feet], but the kid won it with a 14-6 jump. I was extremely angry at that meet, but it was my own fault.”
Coleman would rebound with the help of long-time area coach Pete Hischman, as well as Hatboro-Horsham grad and Penn Relays record-holder, Joe Berry.
“Right when indoor ended, we were outside everyday and I got what is called ‘vertical’ down, which is when you swing up to the top of the pole and straighten out,” said Coleman. “That just started shooting me over the bar. Then I could feel a huge difference. I was just shooting over heights that I would normally struggle to get over and it was really exciting.”
In an early-season dual meet at Abington, Coleman jumped 14-3 to eclipse a 35-year-old school record.
“I just went up at 14-3,” said Coleman. “I think it was my second attempt and I was way over it. On the way down I was just extremely happy, but I wanted to go higher than that.”
Two days later in Tennent’s very next meet at home against Council Rock North Coleman cleared 14-6.
“It was kind of nice jumping at home because that’s where we practice,” said Coleman. “We’ve been practicing with the bar higher than what it actually should be at. We put it up to 14-6 that meet instead of 14-3 and I got that on my second attempt I think. That was great. My coach freaked out.”
Naturally, Coleman’s new record left him craving more.
“Now we just want to keep going higher,” said Coleman. “We just kind of put that behind us. But it was nice to break the record. It was nice hearing that because initially I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I PR’d.’ And then a couple minutes later my coach was like, ‘We got the record.’ It was really nice to do that, but I can’t wait to start going higher.”
With the help of Hischman and the healthy competition Coleman gets each day by competing both with and against Burns, the bar will continue to be bumped up.
“He’s the reason why we’ve been reaching these heights,” said Coleman of Hischman. “He’s just a phenomenal coach and he does it just for the love of the sport. He just wants to help us out and teach us the techniques. His heart is just huge for doing that. We love him over here. He’s awesome. He’s really giving our school a name in pole vaulting. Tennent has never had a name in that. He’s great.”
Burns, a senior, is coming off a fourth-place finish at the indoor state meet.
“We’ve been friends since we were like four so it has been a competition ever since then,” said Coleman of Burns. “At practice we’ll get a couple of jokes in and coach will joke around. One of us will make a mistake and we’ll joke with the other and that just gets you pumped up for the next jump. I’m going to miss that next year because we definitely push each other in every meet and every practice.”
Both Coleman and Burns have qualified for the district meet set for May 15-16 at Coatesville Area High School and hope to move on to states from there.
“I can’t wait for states,” said Coleman. “It’s just going to be great. The only thing I don’t like is that the heights are down from the past couple of years. We had the Joe Berry year where we had a couple kids at 15-0, 15-6 and 16-0 and I think that’s one reason why I’m really, really not satisfied with my heights because I see that these kids have reached these heights in the past and I know I can get there.”
With the work ethic firmly in place, Fries believes a big-time performance is a legitimate possibility.
“It’s a dedication to him,” said Fries of Coleman. “It’s not like we can do the work for him. He shows up every day and puts in the work in the classroom and I’m proud of the kid. I really am. Very few kids go on after high school to be professional athletes, but everybody is going to go out there and have to find a job and that’s what athletics teaches you; it teaches you hard work. He’s a great success story right now.”
A versatile athlete as a youth, Coleman has few gripes about giving up several sports to focus solely on the pole vault.
“This is really what I want to do,” said Coleman. “I ended up quitting a lot of my other sports: football, soccer, baseball, basketball, wrestling. I miss them a lot, but pole vault beats all of that. The second I grabbed the pole, it was like, ‘Alright, I want to go higher. I want to go higher. It’s just a great feeling and a great sport.”
Fries has taken notice of how the sport truly has consumed Coleman.
“He’s a student of the event,” he said. “Any video, any literature, whether it’s on pole vaulting or the mental aspect of sports - that kid just eats it up. I have his girlfriend’s sister in class, and I was talking to her about how he’s just a great kid and she said, ‘When he’s over our house all he talks about is pole vaulting.’ The kid lives for it.”
While Coleman is clearly focused on what could continue to be a breakthrough junior season, his coach can’t help but look toward his bright future.
“He’s got a ton of room for improvement,” said Fries. “He should be one of the better kids in the state this year. Next year, he should be one of the better kids in the country.”
Hopefully, that will translate into having the chance to take his skills to the next level.
“We’ve been looking around at colleges,” said Coleman. “I want to major in nursing so we’ve been looking at mostly Division I colleges because that’s the dream right there: Division I. I think right now at the top of my list is definitely Florida State. I’ll be shooting some emails down there just to throw my name out there a little bit more and we’ll see what they think.”
In the meantime, Coleman will keep setting the bar higher and clearing it.
