Bell's gym, a happening place

ROBERT TURBEVILLE
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

This is the seventh in a series profiling Arkansas athletes with Olympic connections.
JONESBORO -- A simple challenge: Walk around Earl Bell's pole vault gym -- the big barn-like building built in the middle of a bean field -- and try to find something that isn't cool.
The dozens of newspaper clippings taped to a wall? You don't have to read French or German to know they're cool.
The aqua pole vault pit? It was used in the Atlanta Games.
Even the bumper stickers on the cars and SUVs parked outside are cool.
And the people who drive the cars? There's Jeff Hartwig, the snake rancher; Chad Harting, the punk rock guitarist; Tye Harvey, a paraglider; Kellie Suttle, Harting's girlfriend with the girl-next-door look; Kim Becker, a blonde, tattooed and muscular former heptathlete; and Shannon Gallagher, a former gymnast.
"It's weird, isn't it?" Bell said.
MTV's The Real World would be hard-pressed to put together a more interesting cast.
They're not native Arkansans, but three of them competed at Arkansas State. They all live in or near Jonesboro, and they're some of the best pole vaulters the United States has to offer.
Bell, the former Arkansas State Indian, Olympic bronze medalist and world record-holder from Jonesboro, is their coach. His athletes are trying to do something that's very, very cool -- qualify for the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia.
The three guys, headlined by American Indoor and Outdoor record-holder Hartwig, start their attempts today at 9:45 p.m. Central during the first day of the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials at Cal State-Sacramento. Twenty-five men will participate in the trials. The three ladies, headlined by No. 2-ranked Suttle, must wait until the following Friday to compete in a field of 38 women.
Hartwig, a former ASU vaulter, is the favorite to win gold at Sydney. Suttle, a former ASU sprinter and jumper, has a good chance of upsetting American and world record-holder Stacy Dragila. Harting, an ASU assistant and former Indian vaulter, and Harvey have both cleared 19-0 1/4 and have a chance at making the three-man team.
Becker has battled a shoulder injury and, along with Gallagher, is a long shot to make the team.
Still, Bell Athletics, the name of the business Bell started in 1991, boasts the largest stable of pole vaulters in the Trials with seven, including Derek Miles, a Bell pupil who is a University of South Dakota academic adviser but no longer trains in Jonesboro.
It comes from a gym that is the first of its kind and the reason Hartwig said he holds the American records.
Yet Bell's gym isn't overflowing with the world's top vaulters. Sure, there are some very good ones, but with the success Bell has had, the people who train there wonder why every vaulter isn't living in Jonesboro.
"Nowhere else in the country is any one facility producing the quantity and the quality of jumpers that are coming out of here," said Hartwig, the 32-year-old winner of the past two U.S. Outdoor Championships and a 1996 Olympian who never got close to clearing 18 feet in college.
"There are a couple other groups or areas where there's guys kind of flocking to pole vault. But most of the time the people that go are good when they get there. We haven't seen a lot of improvement from other groups."
Bell's athletes have improved. Hartwig, a native of St. Charles, Mo., broke his American Outdoor record at a meet at ASU with a vault of 19-9 1/4, the highest vault in the world this year, according to the International Amateur Athletic Federation. None of the men had cleared 19 feet before working with Bell. The women had very limited pole vault backgrounds before coming to Bell because the sport is so new. (This is the first Olympics with the women's vault.)
"If you give a guy a chance," Bell said, "and give him the right training equipment and a little bit of the right help, and a good set of poles, and hopefully they can benefit from the mistakes I made, a guy's going to do good, a lot better than me. Like Jeff, he's done a lot better than me. And these other guys are jumping 19 feet. Geez ..."
Hartwig said he knows he wouldn't be the vaulter he is today without Bell. He laughed when asked what Bell, 44, has meant to the sport.
"Once again, the results speak for themselves," Hartwig said. "The record would still be Lawrence Johnson's. America would be short three 19-foot pole vaulters and the women's pole vault certainly would have been impacted because what Kim and Kellie and Shannon are doing is continuing to build that."
"We bring the field depth," said Harting, who is from Mexico, Mo. "We've got the American record-holder plus more 19-footers to come and fill out the field with some of the best guys out there, and the women, too."
Suttle, a St. Peters, Mo., native who has tried recently to break Dragila's world record of 15-1, said she wouldn't be vaulting if not for Bell.
The vaulters training in Jonesboro can trace their roots to a sawdust pit that Bell had in his yard as a child. The youngest of four skinny boys, Earl, like his brothers, found his niche in vaulting.
Bell went on to set the world record at 18-7 1/4 as a junior at ASU in 1976. He competed in the Olympics in 1976, 1984 and 1988, winning bronze in 1984.
The facility became a reality after Bell retired. The metal building on Highway 226 is 200 feet long by 60 feet wide, and is about 30 feet from floor to ceiling. Out of it he sells track equipment, holds pole vault camps and indoor meets and trains vaulters.
He, too, is a little surprised that more people haven't flocked to northeast Arkansas' farmland to train. But he's glad they haven't.
"When I first built this, that was a real concern," Bell said. "I thought, 'Oh my goodness, I'm going to be turning the top guys away. I can't have everybody. I can handle a half-dozen or so, and that's about it.' It didn't happen. Thank goodness it didn't happen. But I still don't know why. The best answer I can come up with is everybody has a different formula."
Bell's formula, which led to a very cool place in a bean field and stocked the U.S. with top vaulters, has worked so far.

JEFF HARTWIG
EVENT Pole vault
AGE 32
RESIDENCE Jonesboro
WHEN HE'S COMPETING Qualifying today at 9:45 p.m. Central; finals 1 p.m. Sunday
HOW HE QUALIFIED Cleared qualifying height of 18-4 1/2
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS Indoor and outdoor American record holder; third at 2000 U.S. Indoor Championship; first at 1999 U.S. Outdoor Championships; 1999 world indoor silver medalist; 1999 world team member; first at 1998 Goodwill Games; first at 1998 U.S. Outdoor Championships; fourth at 1997 U.S. Outdoor Championships; 11th 1996 Olympics; seventh at 1995 U.S. Outdoor Championships; first at 1994 Olympic Festival; competed in 1994 U.S. outdoor and indoor championships

KIM BECKER
EVENT Pole vault
AGE 28
RESIDENCE Bono
WHEN SHE'S COMPETING Qualifying, Friday, July 21, 4 p.m.; finals, Sunday, July 23, 4 p.m.
HOW SHE QUALIFIED Cleared qualifying height of 13-0 1/4
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS Tied for fourth at 1999 U.S. Outdoor Championships; fourth at 1999 Pan American Games; 10th at 1999 Goodwill Games; third at 1998 U.S. Outdoor Championships

CHAD HARTING
EVENT Pole vault
AGE 28
RESIDENCE Jonesboro
WHEN HE'S COMPETING Qualifying today at 9:45 p.m. Central; finals 1 p.m. Sunday
HOW HE QUALIFIED Cleared qualifying height of 18-4 1/2
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS Sixth at 1999 U.S. Outdoor Championships; eighth at 1999 U.S. Indoor Championships; silver medal at 1997 World University Games

TYE HARVEY
EVENT Pole vault
AGE 25
RESIDENCE Jonesboro
WHEN HE'S COMPETING Qualifying today at 9:45 p.m. Central; finals 1 p.m. Sunday
HOW HE QUALIFIED Cleared qualifying height of 18-4 1/2
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS Tied for sixth at 1999 U.S. Indoor Championships

KELLIE SUTTLE
EVENT Pole vault
AGE 27
RESIDENCE Jonesboro
WHEN SHE'S COMPETING Qualifying, Friday, July 21, 4 p.m.; finals, Sunday, July 23, 4 p.m.
HOW SHE QUALIFIED Cleared qualifying height of 13-0 1/4
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS Fourth at 2000 U.S. Indoor Championships; second at 1999 U.S. Outdoor Championships; second at 1999 Pan American Games; third at 1999 U.S. Indoor Championships; first at 1998 U.S. Outdoor Championships

SHANNON GALLAGHER
EVENT Pole vault
AGE 25
RESIDENCE Jonesboro
WHEN SHE'S COMPETING Qualifying, Friday, July 21, 4 p.m.; finals, Sunday, July 23, 4 p.m.
HOW SHE QUALIFIED Cleared qualifying height of 13-0 1/4
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS 12th at 1999 U.S. Outdoor championships; competed at 1999 U.S. Indoor Championships

This article was published on Friday, July 14, 2000

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