Redlands High’s Cullen seeks rarefied air

Michael Cullen, Redlands High’s state-meet-bound pole vaulter, was competing at the California Winter Championships at Arcadia High on February 8.

Cullen took a deep breath. He raised his pole. He thundered down the runway and planted. His pole bent as he tucked his body into a L. He was fully upside down before turning his body 180 degrees and clearing the barrier.

The Terrier star bounced off the mat and celebrated. He had cleared 16 feet, one inch – about a foot better than his father Brian Cullen did in high school before he became a Pacific-10 champion at the University of Oregon.

Friday and Saturday, Michael Cullen takes his considerable talents to Buchanan High in Clovis for the CIF-State meet. His Redlands High teammate, Su’Riah Williams, will also compete in the girls’ discus. It will be another chance for Cullen to seek the rarefied air he covets.

“I’m glad to go for the second year,” Cullen said. “I think I can get on the podium, and I think I’ll have a good chance to win.”

NO FEAR

Cullen was a rock climber from the time he was small until age 16. He gave pole vault a whirl because a fellow rock climber was doing the same.

“I thought, ‘Why not go for it?’” Cullen said. “It is fun, and I was pretty good at it.”

The two sports have a common denominator – high places.

“The sports take a certain breed,” said Livio Centanaro, Cullen’s coach at the Ultimate Pole Vault Club in Eastvale. “You can’t be afraid of heights. It also takes some muscles we don’t normally use.”

Centanaro was a pole vaulter at South Hills High in West Covina.

“You have to have trust that you can put that pole in that little box and that it will carry you over that barrier,” Centanaro said. “Nobody’s perfect, but he will continue to grow and the main thing with the pole vault is to improve your strength and speed.”

Cullen cleared 16-3 to win the CIF-Southern Section Division 2 championship two weeks and set a school record. His best indoor mark is 16-6, achieved at the Pole Vault Summit in Reno in January.

Cullen faces stiff competition this weekend in Clovis.

Khaliq Muhammad of Pittsburg High in the Bay Area has a personal best of 17-2, one inch better than University City of San Diego’s Kai Anderson.  

Cullen’s father, Brian, isn’t selling him short.

“He’s amazing and unbelievable,” Brian said. “He has a gift, and he has so much raw talent. He just needs to go to college and sort out some things, but he’s jumping higher than I did when I was in high school.”

Brian Cullen cleared 17-9 ¼ in college, so the potential is there.  

Michael heads to the University of Montana in the fall.

SKY’S THE LIMIT

Some interesting characters have populated the pole vault world.

Cornelius “Dutch” Warmerdam learned to pole vault in his Hanford backyard with the help of a peach tree limb and a mound of dirt on which to land. He held the world record for 17 years.  

Bob Richards was an athlete, minister and politician who won the Olympic gold medal in 1952 and ’56. He was the first athlete to appear on a Wheaties box. He ran for president in 1984 on the Populist Party ticket.

Bob Seagren was the 1968 gold medalist. He was favored to win in 1972 as well but had his new Cata-Pole disallowed in a last-minute ruling (Seagren finished second).

Seagren later became an actor and played Dennis Phillips, a gay football player on the TV show “Soap” opposite Billy Crystal’s character Jodie Dallas.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin was also a pole vaulter. He competed in high school, before becoming the second man on the moon during the Apollo 11 space mission.

Now in his third year at the sport, what does the future hold for Michael Cullen? His coach, Centanaro, doesn’t put a cap on it.    

“The beauty of Michael’s potential is it’s in his hands,” Centanaro said. “If he continues to be a sponge and be coachable, the sky is literally the limit for him. He can go as high as he wants.”