BY JOELLEN COLLINS
When I was a kid, we played Hide and Go Seek. When the caller thought there were no more people hiding, he or she would say “Olli, Olli Oxen Free” (from the game first played in Greece in the second century). We enjoyed mostly street games then, like Kick the Can and short sprints and daring contests.
The Paris Olympics seemed a contrast to the ones I have watched before. This one was exceptionally lavish, costly and certainly highly entertaining. I thought of my childhood play refrain while watching this Olympics, an event way more spectacular than I ever imagined. I termed it “OLY, OLY, NOT So Free.”
I am a track-and-field fan for many reasons. My high school, John Burroughs High School, in Burbank, had a surprisingly successful track program, and my boyfriend was a sprinter, so I got used to carrying a stopwatch with me to our track meets. I followed the sport for most of the following years: I love seeing such skills and have always honored the hard work and magical talent of the athletes who compete in local to Olympic venues. I love that partly because Burroughs was gifted with a pole vaulter, a local kid, Ron Morris, who became famous as the champion high school vaulter in America. At the age of 16, he soared to the then almost unbelievable height of 13 feet, 11-1/8 inches, using a bamboo pole. In the Rome Olympics, he received a silver medal, flying just a smidge less high than the winner of the gold, Don Bragg. After that, technology created an aluminum pole, subsequently adding many inches to even non-Olympic vaulters.
I have been filled with gratitude for being a teenager in a predominantly middle-class town with some lack of fanatical devotion to material comforts and simply an intense pleasure with our gifted athletes. I don’t think we depended on the kind of current financial rewards from those accomplishments.
Watching this brilliant show, I thought of Ron, who just recently passed away. I could imagine that lanky kid so long ago practicing vaulting skills in his modest Burbank home’s backyard, composed of a wooden pole structure, a short runway, and an ample sawdust pit, which his father had constructed. Mr. Morris could take pride in the manner of his son’s achievement, mostly done through extremely hard practice and minimal sponsorship. I even recall how he allowed my much younger brother a chance to try vaulting in that backyard.
Ron kept his love of sports all his life and vaulted and taught at USC. He was known for many years as one of the best vaulters of his generation, and for encouraging younger athletes in track-and-field sports. He created his own athletic equipment business in Burbank and remained the modest winner he always had been.
I’m sure that the Los Angeles Olympics will be gold, spectacular, and mesmerizing, but I miss the simple days of an effort in one’s backyard.