LIGHTFOOT Kc

General
LEARNING FROM OTHER SPORTS
Growing up he was a competitive dirt bike racer and baseball player. He says both sports gave him skills he transferred into pole vault. "I got my first four-wheeler when I was three years old. I loved riding; I rode them in the back yard every day and did so for no other reason than it was fun. I really enjoyed that sense of exhilaration from [dirt bike] racing, and the fact you need to be a little bit crazy. I guess that is similar to vaulting, particularly that no sense of fear. When you are out there vaulting, you're out there on your own hoping everything works out. It was a similar situation on the dirt bikes. It was possible a lot could go wrong, but it was also a lot of fun. In baseball, when batting, you need to make some quick decisions as you are swinging the bat. As the ball comes towards you, you have to act quickly. In a similar way when vaulting, you have to make quick decisions on the pole to make sure the jump works out." He enjoys bridge and cliff jumping with friends, but says this pursuit has less to do with pole vault. "I love to go out with friends and jump in the water and do some back flips, nothing too insane. The highest height I've jumped off in a cliff in Arkansas at around 85 feet. [It is] more a reflection of my fearlessness and of wanting to embrace an adrenaline rush." (worldathletics.org, 12 Dec 2020)

NAME
KC is his full given name. "KC doesn't stand for anything. It could have been spelt C-a-s-e-y, but we just happen to be a little different. The ongoing joke is that my father was a kindergarten teacher for 29 years, and that's only as far as he could spell it out." (sicem365.com, 24 Jun 2021)