Cooper takes athletes to new heights

Ask anyone in the Northland. Ask anyone in the Kansas City area. No, ask anyone in the state. Pole vaulters with ambitions of perfecting their craft need only follow one piece of advice: seek out instruction from Todd Cooper.

"If you want to vault or need help, that’s where you get it," Kearney High vault coach Kenny Brown said. "Todd will do what it takes."

Cooper has the credentials to prove it. Put it this way. Of the 64 pole vaulters who came home with all-state medals from last month’s four State Track and Field Championship meets, nearly half had received personal training from Cooper’s "Just Vault" program. Four of this year’s state champions learned under the tutelage of Cooper. And those numbers have just been the average in recent seasons.

As the vaulting coach at Excelsior Springs for the past 10 years, Cooper produced seven state champions, six state runner-ups and 30-plus all-state medalists for the Tigers alone.

All told, more than 200 all-state pole vaulters — including 25 state champions — have been molded by Cooper’s personal instruction.

"The list is pretty overwhelming now that I think about it," Cooper said humbly.

He’s helped produce all four of the top girls pole vaulters in Missouri high school history, starting with his daughter Hannah, who set the all-time state record two years ago, before moving on to the University of Missouri. Former three-time state champion Tara Diebold of Branson, who has found a home with national powerhouse Arkansas; Rockwood Summit’s Bethany Buell, this year’s Class 4 state champion; and Kearney’s Sydney Haase, who had been the best Class 3 vaulter all spring, are all Cooper disciples.

And it doesn’t stop there. Many other athletes have gone on to continue their careers at the college level. He’s coached a former NCAA record holder. Two more of his protégées have won collegiate national championships.

"He’s done just about everything that can be done," Winnetonka vault coach Jeff Fogel said. "He’s helped a lot of young athletes over the years, and he’s definitely one of the coaches and colleagues I have learned the most from over the years.

"I don’t think the kids know what they have here until they leave. It’s one of those things that they don’t realize what they have until it’s gone."

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People should know, though.

Cooper, a former state champion during his high school days at Excelsior Springs, went on to have a memorable pole vaulting career during his glory days in the 1980s. Helping establish Baylor University as the premier vaulting powerhouse of the time, Cooper went on to become a three-time all-American. He closed out his college career as a two-time NCAA national runner-up, only because of Joe Dial, the American record holder in 1985.

In his senior season, Cooper was a part of Baylor’s trio of all-Americans at the outdoor championships, the only time that had happened in NCAA history. He finished as a four-time Southwest Conference champion, and went on to vault professionally while making appearances at the 1984 and 1988 Olympic trials.

"His accomplishments are impressive," said Brown, who won the Class 3A state pole vault championship with Kearney in 1981 while Cooper grabbed the Class 4A title the same year when the pair graduated. "But that doesn’t matter as much to him as the sport matters to him or how much the kids matter to him. That’s what’s awe-inspiring to me — the way he carries on his knowledge to the kids. That’s what’s impressive."

Fogel added, "To be a good coach, you can’t worry about the past. It’s about being more concerned about when success is going to happen again. It’s about focusing on the future and what’s coming."

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It’s also about having the means to teach.

Cooper has had that for the past decade, thanks to his homemade indoor pole vault practice facility, one of the few of its kind in the Midwest. In fact, Cooper said the nearest to his knowledge resides in Jonesboro, Ark. — the creation of a friend, Earl Bell, a former world-class pole vaulter and former world-record holder who claimed a bronze medal in the 1984 Olympic games in Los Angeles and a fourth-place finish in the 1988 summer games in Seoul, South Korea.

"I remember when Earl told me in the late ’80s that he was going to build a place and train pole vaulters. And I thought to myself, ‘He’s crazy,’" Cooper said. "My brother-in-law told me a few years later that I should do the same thing. I still thought it was crazy, but long story short, I thought, ‘What the heck. Maybe I’m a nut.’

"With help from my family, we built this building from the ground up. It was just delivered in pieces. Twelve thousand nuts and bolts later, it was standing."

Two weeks later, in August of 1999, Cooper held his first camp, and the rest is history. As word of the facility spread, athletes near and far, throughout Missouri, and as far away as Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas began making the trek to the rural outskirts of Excelsior Springs.

There’s nothing awe-inspiring about the appearance of Cooper’s practice facility, but it serves as a "Field of Dreams" for pole vaulters. The simple metal-framed building could be mistaken for a work shed on the outside. On the inside, sprayed-on insulation ironically gives the facility the appearance of a cocoon — a cocoon where raw athletes can develop their abilities to their full potential.

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Now Cooper will have even more time to carry on his sport.

For the past 10 years Cooper has served as the pole vault coach at Excelsior Springs High, and along the way he has also spent time coaching softball, basketball and football. However, he just made the decision to resign from his teaching and coaching duties to focus on his Just Vault program.

Cooper admitted all this started "on a whim," but it’s anything but that now. He plans to expand his camps and private lessons and run his training facility as a club — much like a gymnastics gym, where dedicated athletes will have the opportunity to sharpen their skills.

On the side, Cooper is designing and producing landing systems and poles. But when it’s all said and done, he has one main goal: to help as many athletes as he can.

"That’s what it’s all about," Cooper said. "To see the kids make improvements, to see their faces when they’re working so hard when doing something and then all of a sudden, they get it. It’s just priceless.

"There’s very few things that you can do in life that are as rewarding of seeing the kids succeed. It’s like building something, and you get to stand back and look at what you built, something you helped pieced together. It’s neat to see the kids grow."

Sports writer Chris Geinosky can be reached at 389-6654 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .