An Awesome Pierson Visit

It’s been a crazy three weeks after the birth of my son. It was strange and awesome to be a father on father’s day. Meanwhile, we have had lots of welcome visitors, family and friends checking up on us and showing great support. Amongst them were my dear friends Sam and Emmy Pierson, both Idaho State Alumni and previous athletes I had the pleasure of coaching alongside of Dave Nielsen during my career at the University. Being new parents themselves, they have gone from being my students, to being my teachers and roll models in parenting and keeping up an active, happy and healthy lifestyle.

Difficult to put in the proper phrasing, Sam Pierson and Levi Keller (who I have to mention if I mention this side of Sam) are the most gifted “natural gymnast’s” (who were never gymnast’s) I have ever met. The pairing of the two of them while at Idaho State was something extraordinary to see. Modern day acrobats creating physical challenges for one another on a daily basis, from standing gainers for distance, handstand walk racing down the football stadium bleachers, to creating and naming there own flip tricks off of walls and trees. I could probably write a short book about all those stories, but I started writing today with different intentions in mind. Though they seem just out of my grasp of thought now that my memories and imagination are wondering, it could have something to do with the lack of sleep these past three weeks, the Black Keys blasting in the background I’m singing along too, the baby I’m rocking in a swing with my right foot while I type, or the 32 oz of French pressed coffee I just polished off that is the only thing that keeps my eyes open anymore.

Back on track, after being cooped up in my house for weeks with the new and confusing adventure of parenting I knew to take full advantage of one of my craziest friends coming through town. Sam, Emmy and baby Colton stayed with us for close to a week. Sam being a fellow brother of back pain and severe disc issues, we had planned to pole vault together while he was in town, but the long travel demanded a few days of recovery and rest first. So on those “recovery and rest days”, we went on epic advanced mountain bike rides both having a few decent flights through the air over our handle bars, played way too many holes of disc golf, and went rock climbing both taking trips up the wall on lead.

So after those three days of “rest”, we decided to jump. Maybe not the best setup for a session, but we still managed to have a lot of fun. Both going straight to our full approach runs we only put the bar up at 5.40m (17’8.5”) which would be a new backyard record. We failed to clear it, but had some exciting (when I see exciting I mean scary) jumps. We videoed most of them, and I thought I would share some.

Despite all the chaos, Sam has one of the classiest takeoffs in the business and those of you young folks out there looking for a model to mimic, here it is. Apologies for my old video camera that makes slow motion into a blurry mess, hopefully you can catch my meaning. I tried to freeze his takeoff in the video, so don’t think that your computer is frozen.

                                                Here is me showing you how not to takeoff. 

These are just two funny jumps of Sam and then Me