THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 30, 1996 TAG: 9605300516
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Tom Robinson
LENGTH: 62 lines
Once, as American pole vault king Lawrence Johnson tells it, what he knew of vaulting came from a cartoon. Tom and Jerry. During a game of cat and mouse, for some reason, one character pole vaulted. Boooiiiing, just like that. Johnson, also for some reason, remembers getting a kick out of it.
``That was one episode I liked,'' Chesapeake's Johnson recalled this spring, before he set an American record Saturday with a vault of 19 feet, 7 1/2 inches, and before he won his second consecutive NCAA outdoor title Wednesday night. ``It's the only place I'd ever seen it done.''
Yet when Johnson turned up as a Lake Taylor High School freshman, launching himself vertically skyward with a pole, feet up, head down, was not the idea. He was intent on tracking his father's footsteps.
Lawrence Sr. was a hurdler whom Lake Taylor coach Floyd Conley once tutored as an assistant at Norfolk State. However, Conley already had a stable of strong hurdlers, and Johnson was the least of them.
The kid had talent, though, and Conley knew he could use him somewhere. But Conley didn't think long jump, or quarter mile, or relay team. He looked at Johnson fooling around before practices, doing flips, taking chances with his body, landing perfectly, and two eccentric, little words clanged in his brain - pole vault.
Can Conley call them or what?
``You could see his belief in himself and his ability to do stunts and tumbles with no fear,'' Conley, 51, recalled Wednesday at Lake Taylor, where he's coached track since 1978. ``It was a reckless abandonment. He wasn't afraid of anything. Any kid who's an athlete and not afraid of turning upside down can be a pole vaulter.''
People can forget that Johnson started at Lake Taylor. Johnson found his greater glory at Great Bridge, where he moved with his parents before his junior year. There he became a national champion, the top high school vaulter in the country, and has become one of the world's best at the University of Tennessee.
But Conley, never a pole vaulter himself at Union Kempsville High or Norfolk State, lays claim to first opening Johnson's eyes to a future that stretched even beyond the pole vault.
``He could run distance, he could sprint, he could hurdle, and he wasn't afraid of heights,'' says Conley, who still talks with Johnson often. ``I told him after his freshman year, `You can be world class in the decathlon if you want to.' ''
He may be yet. Johnson set a Tennessee freshman decathlon record and could make the decathlon part of his pro career.
``I can't say that's out of the picture,'' Johnson said. ``I know in the next few years I'll be focusing on the pole vault and a couple goals I want to reach.''
The real exciting things about Johnson, Conley says, eyes wide, are his sense of self, his clear perspective.
``Lawrence Johnson is world class and does not boast,'' Conley says. ``That's one thing I really like about him. He's different. Most pole vaulters are a little crazy, kooky. Lawrence is very level-headed.''
But just enough off-center to ply his passion into a unique athletic world whose horizons expand with the days.
More than confident enough, though, to stare into the special glare of 20 feet and beyond. To step up to it and not flinch. To know that one day he will visit there, too. by CNB