By Moin Salahuddin
Daily Bruin Staff
By looking at the lanky, 6-foot-2, 180-pound frame of Brian
McLaughlin, it would be tough to notice that this Bruin senior is
into extreme sports.
As a child growing up in San Diego, though, McLaughlin always
loved to do, as he says, “all kinds of crazy
stuff.”
“I’d climb huge trees and jump off the roof just for
the fun of it,” he said. “When I was a kid, I’d
get out the couch cushions and do flips.”
This insatiable thirst for flying high only became more deeply
rooted in high school.
He went out for the high jump on the track team, he said,
because it looked “kind of fun.” But little did anyone
know that McLaughlin’s destiny lay right across the
track.
“I saw guys on the other side pole vaulting and that
looked even more fun,” he said, smiling. “It was a way
to get higher.”
McLaughlin not only had more fun training for the pole vault, he
excelled in the technically complex event. At West Hills High
School, he set a school record with his clearance of 14-6, but
failed to qualify for the California State meet.
“I did OK,” he said. “But looking back, I
wasn’t that good at all. I was nowhere near a phenom as most
of the athletes here at UCLA.”
So McLaughlin stayed close to home and enrolled at Cuyamaca
Junior College. During his two years there, he captured the
Southern California and State pole vaulting titles and set a
personal best of 16-10 1/2.
“I was able to make the improvements I needed to make to
move on to a four-year university,” McLaughlin said.
But he added that his junior college track and field team was
equivalent to intramural sports in many ways. So much so that it
made things much more difficult on the vaulter.
“They were out there to just have fun,” McLaughlin
said. “But I was working hard and taking it
seriously.”
As the top community college vaulter in California, McLaughlin
followed the advice from a former vaulting friend who competed at
UCLA that McLaughlin should be a Bruin.
“I knew he had a lot of potential,” UCLA pole
vaulting coach Anthony Curran said. “He was just a late
bloomer physically.”
So McLaughlin and Curran decided it was best for the junior
college transfer to redshirt that year and improve his strength and
speed.
“It wasn’t quite as an abrupt change as if I had
gone right into competition,” McLaughlin said. “It gave
me a chance to come in to my competition with a running
start.”
After a year of training for the event, McLaughlin added six
inches to his best height, clearing 17-4 1/2 to rank in the top 50
nationally. Then, in the outdoor Pac-10 championships, he finished
a surprising third.
“Physically, I felt a lot better that first year of
competition,” said McLaughlin, who admires Ukraine’s
Sergei Bubka, arguably the best vaulter ever. “So I knew I
had a pretty high jump in store.”
“We were taking him along slowly,” Curran said.
“But this year, he has shown how great a vaulter he can
be.”
McLaughlin entered the 2000 Indoor track and field season hoping
to qualify for nationals. Not only did he make the national
championship meet in Arkansas as only one of two Bruins competing,
but he also achieved a lifetime goal of breaking 18 feet, finishing
fourth overall in the competition and setting a personal-best of 18
1/2.
To clear 18 feet for a collegiate pole vaulter is an amazing
feat in itself, but eclipsing the mark indoors pushed McLaughlin
into the upper echelon of vaulters in the nation.
“He is our unsung hero of the season so far,” UCLA
head coach Art Venegas said. “He’s extremely
competitive and vaulted phenomenally at the indoors.”
“It meant a lot,” McLaughlin said of breaking the
18-foot barrier. “It was a goal that I set a long time
ago.”
That vault made McLaughlin only the fourth vaulter in school
history to clear 18 feet, joining the likes of former Pac-10
champion Scott Slover.
This outdoor season, the senior hopes to improve his best
clearance to 18-4 to qualify for U.S. Olympic Trials in July. That
four-inch improvement might seem as an easy task at first glance,
but McLaughlin is quick to warn that the higher you get, the
tougher it is to add on more height.
“It gets harder and harder,” he said. “Once
you learn the basics, you can dig deeper into the smallest
technical aspects of pole vaulting. And it’s almost an
endless thing.”
McLaughlin’s flair for the extreme and his dedicated
nature will likely land him in the Olympic Trials. He realizes,
however, that financially it would be nearly impossible to pursue
pole vaulting as a career.
“It’s kind of sad because I love doing it,”
McLaughlin said. “It’s a fun sport.”
But first, McLaughlin is looking ahead to Saturday, when his
UCLA squad will face off against archrival USC at Drake
Stadium.
And what will he be thinking once he steps on that runway?
“I’m just thinking about relaxing,” he said.
“Then I’m thinking about running as fast as I can down
that runway. Then planting very tall and very aggressive. And once
I hit the plant, I don’t think at all. I leave the ground and
the muscle memory takes over.”
And don’t be surprised if McLaughlin’s high-flying
antics result in a personal-record clearance and a future chance to
compete for the United States.