Maurice leads seven pole vaulting brothers
Pole vaulting runs in the family of Maurice Jenkins, a junior on the USU track team. He is one of seven brothers who has taken up the sport.
The vaulting tradition began when Shannon, the oldest, was in high school. He wanted to do wrestling, but his uncle had been hurt in that sport so his parents encouraged him to choose something else. So he decided to try pole vaulting.
“I think Shannon chose pole vaulting to sort of spite my parents,” said another brother, Jerome. “I can’t think of a more dangerous sport.”
Shannon started vaulting his junior year of high school, and by his senior year he had won the state championship.
The tradition was begun.
Maurice started vaulting when he was about 7 years old. His brother, Shannon, brought home a pole that he had broken in practice and taught his little brothers how to vault with it.
“We didn’t have mats or anything,” Maurice said. “We tried to jump onto the roof, the tramp, piles of leaves and old mattress springs.”
“We got hurt lots of times,” Jerome said. “We’d end up in the springs of the tramp, so we started saving padding from Dumpsters.”
The brothers and their friends spent a whole summer digging a runway in their backyard. Jerome estimated they moved about 75,000 pounds of dirt to make the ground level. Jerome once built standards out of PVC pipe, but they fell shortly after in a thunderstorm.
Jerome said the family seems to get better with every brother.
“Every younger brother breaks the record of the older brother,” he said.
The brothers are all about three years apart, so the only ones who were in high school together were Hans and Jerome.
“That was awesome,” said Jerome of competing with Hans. “All through junior high I couldn’t wait. [Hans] taught me really good form.”
Maurice and Jerome competed together here at USU during the 1999 and 2000 seasons.
“We helped each other out, which was really fun,” Maurice said. “A big reason I came up here was because [Jerome] tranferred here from Weber [State].”
Head track coach Gregg Gensel said, “It’s nice having brothers on the team together. They are very competitive with each other so they work really hard to improve. It works out real well.”
The brothers have won many honors. Maurice, whose vault of 17 feet is currently the second best in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, placed sixth at the Outdoor Big West Conference Championships and hit a MPSF qualifying mark in indoor track in 1999.
At Viewmont High School, he was the region champion and record holder and won the state title in the pole vault.
Jerome was fifth in the conference at Weber State University as a freshman and holds the WSU record. He was also a three-time academic all-conference award winner. He came in eighth place at the BWC Outdoor Championships in 1999.
Shannon held the high school state record in the pole vault and also vaulted at WSU. Hans vaulted in high school as well as at Johnson Kennedy Community College.
Tyrone competed for a year in high school, and Marlin, the youngest brother, is still in junior high but says he wants to compete next year when he is old enough.
Ian is currently a junior in high school. He won the state championship as a sophomore and has won every meet so far this year. His goal is to get the sate record back in the family name, and he says he will probably come up here to USU after he graduates.
Maurice and Jerome are currently attending USU. Maurice is majoring in biology, and Jerome in aerospace engineering. The family lives in Logan.