Erica Bartolina a blast from the past

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http://blog.oregonlive.com/trackandfiel ... rom_t.html

Erica Bartolina a blast from the past
Posted by Doug Binder July 09, 2008 10:01AM
We spent a fair amount of time wading through all the athletes names looking for the ones we considered "local" prior to the Olympic Trials.

We missed Erica Bartolina, who used to go by Erica Boren before she got married.

But when you get right down to it, Bartolina is as local Oregon as you get. By the end of the trials we had 14 or 15 pegged as "locals" -- mostly people who moved here to go go school or train.

Only three -- Galen Rupp, Ian Dobson and Bartolina -- actually grew up and went to high school here.

And so, I went through some of my oldest clips last night, from the days I worked at the Gazette-Times in Corvallis in the mid-90s. I wondered if I had ever done a profile of Boren, because I remembered the gist of her story. Philomath. Pole vaulter. Mostly blind in one eye.

One of the dozens of Oregon high school champions I've covered and never expected to hear about ever again. Except, Boren became an Olympian.

Here is what I re-discovered last night in my old G-T clips.

When pole vault was offered up to girls in 1993, Philomath was one of the first schools to get on board with it in a big way. Volunteer assistant coach Dennis Phillips, a former standout at Oregon State who was once a world-class competitor, was doing the instructing.

And Melisa Mellein was the first standout female pupil. In 1994 she qualified to compete at the US Outdoor Championships in Knoxville, Tenn. Women's pole vault was a fledgling event, and the competition was held as an exhibition. Mellein qualified by clearing 8-6 -- a height that is attained by JV girls these days.

Mellein no-heighted at the opening heigh of 8-0 in Knoxville, but her accomplishment of making it there prior to her senior year of high school turned some heads in Philomath.

The next girl through the pipeline was Erica Boren, who grew up on a sheep farm in Kings Valey. She was a very good Class 3A competitor back then for all four years. She won one state title as a junior in 1997 and was in the top three all four years. But, honestly, there were so few good pole vaulters back then. Anyone who took it seriously enough to practice every was likely going to state at that time.

She wasn't the best athlete on her team at Philomath. Jumper Cathy McNeely won six state titles through that period and would later go on to play basketball and jump for Washington State.

In high school, Boren was an 11-0 vaulter.

But I have to think Dennis Phillips gets some credit for launching her career, and she was clearly nurtured in college. She won two Big 12 titles for Texas A&M, the school's first femaile vaulter to receive financial aid.

I discovered stories I had written about Phillips, Mellein and McNeely for the G-T. Nothing specifically about Boren (That only means I didn't keep it, if I did).

And now, knocking on the door of 15 feet, Bartolina is going to Beijing.

Probably my favorite story from the entire Trials.

Buy her calendar here.