BILLINGS — The handclaps, spaced far apart at first, picked up pace with each subsequent coming-together of the hands.
As he stood on the Memorial Stadium pole vault runway in Great Falls, Saco’s Blaine Downing knew that Skol Viking applause from the grandstands was for him.
The ritual first gained widespread attention as Iceland’s soccer team made an unexpected run in the Euro 2016 championships but has since been adapted by other sporting crowds over the world. Now, it was being performed as Downing attempted to break the Class C pole vault record at last year’s state track and field meet, the crowd’s claps reaching a crescendo by the time Downing launched himself into the air on each attempt.
“I went the whole meet, you know, just hearing nothing, and all of a sudden that starts,” Downing recalled. “At first, it's kind of shocking. You're like, ‘Oh, everybody's watching. Better not mess up.’”
Downing missed his first two attempts, knocking the bar off the standards that were raised 15 feet, 3 inches from the ground. His third and final attempt was precise, though, and he broke the Class C record of Arlee’s Rafe Espinoza that had stood since 2001. It also gave Downing his second straight pole vault title.
“My coach just said, ‘Run hard, muscle it out and you'll get over it,’” Downing said. “So, all the technique was there, all the practice was there. I mean, the simpler the better, honestly, when it gets to that point.”
From the time a pole vaulter starts rocking back and forth on the runway, accelerates the 43 yards or so to the pit, plants, inverts, and — hopefully — clears the bar, maybe seven seconds have elapsed.
Depending on how many clearances a vaulter ends up making, they may have competed for 45 seconds total, in the estimation of Kirk Capdeville, a former two-time Class C pole vault champion from Hinsdale and NCAA Division II indoor All-American at Minot State.
In the analysis of Capdeville, who works with pole vaulters across northeast Montana (including Downing) with any spare time that his farming life affords him, it’s not those 45 seconds or so where Downing stands out.
It’s all that down time in between, all that time between events, between attempts, that a track-and-field athlete has to themselves. All that time to overthink. “No brain, no headache,” Capdeville likes to say. Keep it simple.
“Blaine does a pretty good job of that,” Capdeville continued, meaning Downing’s ability to compete worry-free once he gets going. “He’s good at making little adjustments and not let it affect or ruin his mindset for the rest of the event.”
And just what is Downing’s mindset when it comes to the pole vault? What led him to be a two-time champion, now trying for a third title as a senior, with his own Class C record or perhaps even an all-class record to overtake?
It’s been an evolving approach to the event, for sure. It wasn’t until Downing placed second at state in the pole vault as a freshman that both Capdeville and Downing’s mom, Kelly, who doubles as Saco’s head track coach, saw Blaine’s commitment to the event take a turn toward the more serious.
“I think once he started seeing some success, I could just tell he really matured,” Capdeville said. “I’m not saying he was unfocused, but he went for me from being this kid to a flat competitor.”
Downing agreed with that assessment. While he’s friends with the other area pole vaulters he competes with — a lot of them train together on occasion during gatherings in Glasgow — Downing said that when he’s in the pole vault area, he’s a little less welcoming. Business is at hand.
It’s an approach that has served him well in his other athletic endeavors. He’s also the defending Class C 400-meter champion, and he has signed to play college football at Montana State University after a highly successful fall season playing for the Malta Mustangs.
Capdeville admitted he might be biased, given his own success, but he said pole vaulters are usually among a track team’s best athletes. The event requires speed, strength in the legs, arms, shoulders, core, and body awareness, among other attributes.
The Mustangs’ football staff put Downing all over the field, a testament to his athletic ability. Downing played running back, defensive end, linebacker; anywhere he was needed on Malta’s march to the Class B state championship with a win over Manhattan in November.
Ironically, it’s that football future putting up hurdles for Downing this spring. The Montana State coaching staff has tasked Downing with putting on as much weight as he can before fall camp, and that, of course, will affect his vaulting technique as well as the need to find larger poles to accommodate his growing strength and weight.
But priorities being what they are — and there is no denying his Montana State football future is his top priority now — doesn’t mean Downing is letting up on the track. He would like to top the Class C record he set last season and also take a stab at the all-class mark of 16-4 set by Helena’s Chase Smith in 2015.
“But anything over 15 feet, I’d be happy with,” said a realistic Downing, whose younger sister Emerson placed second in the pole vault last year as a freshman and whose younger brother Trey has started vaulting, as well.
One priority that will never change for Downing is his grandfather Dale, who passed away when Downing was in seventh grade. One day, Downing said, he came across a Facebook post his mom made about her son and her late father.
“She said, ‘Every time he vaults, he gets a little closer to Grandpa Dale,’” Downing said. “I don't know, that's kind of stuck with me a little bit to just to think about that. That pushes me to do the best I can.”
Maybe Grandpa Dale was one of those pairs of hands helping to push Downing to new heights as he stood on the runway last spring at Memorial Stadium.
