Living up to her own high standards

Thursday, June 6, 1996

Acuff’s early season suffers due to need for late-season peakBy
Scott Yamaguchi

Daily Bruin Staff

As the days of her junior season wind down, UCLA’s Amy Acuff has
firmly established herself as the best collegiate high jumper there
has ever been.

Last week, at the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Ore.,
Acuff added to her list of accomplishments a fourth individual
title. Her second NCAA outdoor win, this one was earned with a
season-best leap of 6-feet, 4 1/4-inches.

She is a three-time Pacific 10 Conference champion, and with a
personal-best leap of 6-6 at last year’s conference meet in Tucson,
Ariz., is the owner of the collegiate record.

She is only the second woman in history to win all three major
high jump titles (NCAA indoor, NCAA outdoor and USA Track and
Field) in the same season, having done it last year; and at the
World Championships in Goteborg, Sweden last August, she was the
lone American to make the final round, eventually finishing eighth
with a leap of 6-4.

But the 1995 Pac-10 Women’s Track and Field Athlete of the Year
is satisfied with none of this. Like she does with the bar she
jumps over, Acuff sets her goals very high.

"I’d like to tie or break the outdoor American record while I’m
still here, either this summer or next year," she said. "If I can
stay healthy, then I know I’m capable of doing it this year."

Her first opportunity will come next week in Atlanta, where she
will be competing in the United States Olympic trials for a spot on
the Olympic team. There, however, the emphasis will not be placed
so much on any kind of records, but simply on making the team.

At the moment, Acuff is rated the No. 2 high jumper in the
nation, while the top three finishers at trials will be selected to
the team. Since she opened her season in the fall, Acuff has
focused her entire training regimen around this meet and the
Olympic games.

The hope has been that she will avoid the premature peak that
she experienced last year, when she cleared 6-6 at the conference
championships in May, only to drop to 6-4 at the World
Championships in August.

And to this point, the plan appears to have worked. As she
enters the trials, Acuff is stronger, faster and healthier than she
has ever been at this late stage in the season.

"I’ve tried to push everything back to aim for a later-season
peak," she said. "I feel like I haven’t even come into my own as
far as jumping this year. I haven’t gotten the big heights yet, but
I’m hoping that will come over the summer.

"Last year, I peaked at Pac-10s, and by the time August and the
World Championships came around, my training base was falling out
from under me. This year, I hope to stay healthy longer and to
really jump high later in the summer."

Of course, the new training strategy did not come without a
cost. Because Acuff has struggled in the past with a nagging injury
to her right ankle, she has been unable to endure heavy training
for an entire season. Extending her peak to later in the season
meant that she had to ease up early on, and when the NCAA indoor
championships rolled around in early March, she wasn’t in the shape
to defend her two previous indoor titles.

"The indoor championships were ignored a little bit," UCLA head
coach Jeanette Bolden said. "But in order for Amy to accomplish
everything she wants to accomplish this year, she had to sacrifice
something. Unfortunately, she sacrificed being able to defend her
championship (titles) indoors."

She did finish second at the indoor meet, but her fall from the
top of the NCAA had track and field pundits questioning her ability
to live up to the standard she had set during the previous
year.

This speculation continued well into her outdoor season, when
Acuff began to take on more intense workouts. The heavier training
was increasing her speed and strength levels, and she was having a
hard time making the compensations in her technique.

"I’m just a stronger, faster, more powerful person than I was
last year," Acuff said. "Early in the year, it was very hard to get
my approach because I just really wanted to throw all my extra
speed and power into it, and I found my technique suffering because
of it.

"I couldn’t get into the positions that I needed to because I
was being way too aggressive, and I just needed to back off and
find a rhythm."

Eventually, she found that rhythm, and since the midpoint of the
outdoor season, she has kept her critics relatively silent. She won
the Pac-10 title with a leap of 6-3 1/4 in May, and has since
regained her position atop the NCAA.

All that’s missing now is a berth on the Olympic team, and then
a strong showing in the Olympic Games. Should these fall into
place, and Acuff is confident that they will, then her decision to
alter the training plan will have been well-worth the second-place
finish at the NCAA indoor meet.

"The whole season is definitely revolving around that late-July,
early-August scenario," she said. "Whereas a lot of the college
athletes ­ their bodies are stressed out and they’re all
tapered out and ready to quit ­ I feel like I’m begging for
more training.

"I’m ready to go a lot further for several months."

As she enters the trials, Acuff is stronger, faster and
healthier than she has ever been at this late stage in the
season.

"I’m just a stronger, faster, more powerful person than I was
last year."

Amy Acuff

Track and fieldSUSIE CHU/Daily Bruin

High jumper Amy Acuff won the NCAA meet with a leap of 6-4, but
figures to go inches higher in the Olympic trials.