Pope on one runway or another

Don’t look now, but Lucas Pope is flying again.

Of late, most of the aeronautics take place high above the pole vault pit at Coeur d’Alene High, but you might also spot him overhead when you look up at a passing plane.

Pope, a student athlete/solo pilot/top-notch water and snow skier, is also the school record holder in the pole vault, having hit 14 feet, 7 inches as a junior.

Now he’s hoping he has the right stuff to eclipse the state record of 16-6, a mark he said he thinks is realistic – given “a lot of hard work” and the right atmospheric conditions.

“If I can get a few days in row of warmer weather to practice in, and then have a nice day for a meet, I think I can pull out a pretty big jump,” said Pope, who went 10-9 as a freshman and 13-6 as a sophomore. “The pole seems to bend a little better in warmer weather, and my body seems to work a lot better, too.”

It seems pilots and pole vaulters have something in common.

“I think pole vaulting is a little more tricky than flying,” explained Pope, who also runs hurdles for the Vikings. “There is so much that has to go right: Pole vaulting is 90 percent speed and 90 percent technical (he said, jokingly), and you use about every muscle that you can imagine in your body to make it up over the bar.

“The consequences of screwing up are about the same, though.”

How one makes the decision to attempt the pole vault, or to climb into a cockpit, for that matter, is an entirely different story.

“I guess it just looked like fun,” said Pope, who began vaulting as a freshman. “My dad was a vaulter in high school, and he wasn’t pushing me or anything, but he’s always been encouraging of everything I want to do.”

Pope is following in the footsteps of his dad, Kent, a pilot and assistant track coach at CHS who at one time held the vault record of 12-9 at Butte County High School in Arco, Idaho.

The time for him to make his way, though, is on final approach.

“I’d like to get a scholarship somewhere, if I could,” said Pope, who wants to study mechanical engineering and has Washington State, Utah State and Idaho State on his wish list. “A lot of that will have to do with how well I do the rest of this season and waiting to see just how high I can go.”