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TRI-VALLEY ATHLETICS: ROAD TO BEIJING
Home is where the vault is
Livermore family opens doors to athletes
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By Bob Highfill
Record Sports Editor
May 25, 2008 6:00 AM
LIVERMORE - Nestled in a corner of a cul-de-sac in a quiet subdivision in Livermore stands the headquarters of one of the largest track and field clubs in the country.

The two-story home of Jim and Michelle Doggett is the nerve center of Tri-Valley Athletics, which until recently was only for high school pole vaulters and adults competing in masters events.

In January, when Olympic hopefuls Tye Harvey, Amy Acuff and Suzy Powell-Roos needed a new club to help support them and other athletes after Tiger Bar Sports in Isleton disbanded, the Doggetts brought them into their organization.

Now, Tri-Valley Athletics includes the high school and masters vaulters who train at a pit the Doggetts built on the side yard of their home, as well as about 20 supreme track and field athletes and their renowned coach, Dan Pfaff, who are training for the Summer Olympics in Beijing at a remote warehouse on Rough and Ready Island in Stockton.

Track and field athletes lose their support once their college careers end, making clubs like Tri-Valley essential to their success.

"It's amazing to me how many people think the post-collegiate athletes have it made," Michelle Doggett said. "There is no post-collegiate track and field team, and Tri-Valley Athletics is a team. They support each other."

Tri-Valley's elite athletes, who have competitors in nearly every track and field event, have benefitted from contacts the Doggetts have established over their 10-plus years of coaching at the club and high school levels. Tri-Valley is an established non-profit with a well-organized board of directors. The club's structure, matched with the Doggetts' know-how and enthusiasm, were just what the Olympic hopefuls needed after Tiger Bar Sports ceased operations when its land on Twitchell Island went up for sale.

"They have a great board and visibility and credibility in the track and field world," said Pfaff, who has coached 33 Olympians, including seven medalists. "They have contacts we don't. It's been a blessing."

Acuff, a three-time Olympic high jumper, said the elite athletes are proud to represent Tri-Valley Athletics.

"We had more athletes on the World Championship team than any club in the country," she said.

Tri-Valley's youth athletes, which number about 35 from Livermore, Granada, Amador Valley and Castro Valley high schools, have received instruction and encouragement from the elite athletes.

"The synergy has been great," Michelle Doggett said.

The high school athletes even have adopted some of Pfaff's training programs.

"The elites help a lot," said Michael Bueno, a 17-year-old junior at Granada High in Livermore. "It's nice to get positives from them."

The Doggetts didn't have the slightest idea about pole vaulting until their oldest son, Travis, came home from school one day during his freshman year at Livermore High and announced that he was going to pole vault.

"I'm not even sure I had seen the pole vault," Michelle Doggett said. "We watched him practicing and it was horrifying. It was the most unorganized chaos I had ever seen."

Jim Doggett, 49, stepped forward and volunteered to coach Livermore High's pole vaulting team. He immersed himself in the sport and quickly became addicted to it. The Doggetts ripped out the bird flight, where they raised parrots, on the side of their home and installed a cement runway and pole vault pit. They started Tri-Valley to provide year-round training for vaulters.

"They're really good at one-on-one coaching," said Melissa Lau, a 17-year-old junior at Granada High. "They pay attention to everyone's vault, which I know is really hard."

The Doggetts have coached the past seven years at Granada High after spending three years at Livermore High. They are non-salaried volunteers. Their club members pay $80 per year, of which $20 goes to USA Track and Field. Jim works at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory as a business manager for environmental restoration. Michelle left her job at the lab many years ago. She tends to their 15-year-old daughter, Alexis, a pole vaulter at Granada High, and manages the club's affairs.

The Doggetts have spent thousands of their own dollars on equipment for their club members. It can be expensive. Poles, for instance, range from $250 to $600 each.

"We lose money every day," Michelle said. "It's a labor of love."

Several times a week, cars fill the cul-de-sac near the Doggetts' house, and the vaulters jump for hours.

"My son likes to go over there and watch them," said Tami Taylor, who lives two doors away. "They look like they're having fun out there."

They have been for 10 years and plan to have fun for many more.

From the Sacramento Bee:

http://www.sacbee.com/100/v-print/story/987202.html

As Olympic Trials approach, intensity heightens
An ordinary warehouse in the Port of Stockton serves as a training facility for a group of Olympic hopefuls

By John Schumacher - jschumacher@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PDT Wednesday, June 4, 2008

STOCKTON – Sometimes the road to Beijing starts in unlikely places.

Inside an old, spacious warehouse on Rough and Ready Island, amid the runways, jumping pits and pole vault poles, Olympic dreams burn bright.

Building 812, an aging, 40,000-square foot facility deep in the Port of Stockton, serves as a modest, remote springboard for some 20 athletes eager to earn their way to China for the 2008 Games.

The decor screams simplicity. Two long strips of reclaimed Astroturf serve as runways for sprint work. A narrow, raised path leads to the pit for the long and triple jumps. A tall, nylon screen guards the shot put ring.

A mat on top of Astroturf leads to the pole vault pit, where there's plenty of room to sail over the bar and check out the old metal roof. The high jump pit is on the other side of the weightlifting area. Security cameras that tape workouts are set up closer to the middle of the room.

Veteran track and field coach Dan Pfaff prowls the floor, offering advice and encouragement, theory and history, muscle rubs and therapy in a place that can be reached only by crossing a bridge, clearing a security checkpoint and curling around a semi-truck or two.

Since January, this has been the training home for a group of athletes that includes three-time Olympic high jumper Amy Acuff, 2007 world champion pole vaulter Brad Walker, two-time U.S. heptathlon champion Hyleas Fountain and Modesto native Suzy Powell-Roos, the American record holder in the discus.

There also is room in the Tri-Valley Athletics training group for a handful of international athletes, two Winter Olympics hopefuls and less-heralded lights such as former Cal long and triple jumper Vince Ibia, who admits to being in awe of the surrounding talent.

"It's nice to have a place to come that's open arms, welcomes you whether you hold the American record or you just start looking to improve on your personal best," said pole vaulter Niki McEwen, a former University of Oregon standout and the runner-up at the 2007 USA Outdoor Championships.

Olympic-caliber track and field athletes often find themselves on their own once they leave college. Financial survival can mean getting a part-time job. Finding the right coach and training group can be the difference between an Olympic medal and a career of regrets.

"This place is home to people who otherwise would be cast aside," said pole vaulter Tye Harvey, a Sonora High School graduate who is married to Acuff.

"And I think it creates a wonderful, wonderful energy."

This group trained on Twitchell Island in Isleton until that property went on the market. When the Port of Stockton offered a lease for $1, the athletes quickly accepted.

"The port really saved our butts," said Acuff, a six-time U.S. Outdoor champion who finished fourth in the 2004 Olympics. "We would all be ruined if it wasn't for that chance."

Port director Richard Aschieris said he was happy to lend a hand.

"They're absolutely terrific people," Aschieris said. "They're pursuing a dream. I'm really pleased we were able to find a place for them.

"We decided we wouldn't do it for profit. It would be the port's contribution to helping (assemble) the best possible Olympic team."

Pfaff keeps everyone moving toward their goals. Besides the experience that comes with coaching athletes like Olympic gold medalist Donovan Bailey and bronze medalist Obadele Thompson and working at Florida, Texas, LSU, Texas-El Paso, Wichita State and Houston, he provides access to a vast network of doctors, therapists and other support personnel.

"I have a gift to kind of synthesize and separate fact from fiction for people," Pfaff said. "And I think that's the role I serve. I look at myself more as an advisor to these people than a, quote, coach."

Acuff considers herself blessed to train under Pfaff's direction.

"It's just like having a little mobile scientist and father figure and therapist and biomechanist on hand," she said. "He's just amazing."

Acuff and Harvey, who live in Isleton, helped form the group. Pfaff commutes from Oakley; 11 of the athletes share two houses in the Stockton area.

Fountain, the heptathlon champion, said the atmosphere is conducive to training, even if she has to share a room in one of the Stockton houses with two other female athletes.

"Everybody's trying to achieve the same goal," she said. "I haven't shared a room in like, I don't know. … We all kind of have our own little corners."

And their own little stories. Harvey juggles a part-time construction job with coaching and organizing things such as a street vault at the recent Asparagus Festival in Stockton.

"Now I'm extremely focused on getting through the next month and trying to give it my best shot at the Olympic Trials," said Harvey, who finished fourth in the 2004 Trials at Hornet Stadium.

With the Olympic Trials set for June 27-July 6 in Eugene, Ore., the athletes' focus is sharpening.

"It was 'happy valley' until about April, and then the nerves started coming up," Pfaff said. "So now people are starting to snipe and whatnot.

"Everybody that's been through this cycle expects that."

Those who survive the Trials will head to Beijing for the Olympic Games, set for Aug. 8-24. Acuff, the odd woman out in a four-way battle for the top three spots in the Athens Olympics in 2004, hopes for a better outcome.

"That is my venue to express this accumulation of knowledge and learning," she said. "So I really want to go there and win a medal."


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