In the Air, He Can Hackett

“Hello, Batman!” is the campus greeting for 16-year-old Shane Hackett of Verdugo Hills High.

Dressed in black tights, the skinny, fearless pole vaulter flies through the air like an indestructible action hero.

He showed up in the fall of 1996 as a 4-foot-11, 98-pound freshman and became a third-string defensive back on the freshman-sophomore football team.

“I just love the contact sports,” Hackett said. “I would go up against guys 6-4, 210 pounds. I wasn’t afraid to hit anybody.”

After a 200-pound teammate fell on Hackett during practice, twisting his knee, the cry went out, “They broke the Hackett!”

When spring came around, Hackett’s mother suggested he try a safer sport--track and field.

“I said, ‘No way, I hate running,’ ” Hackett said. “Then the assistant principal said, ‘He looks like a pole vaulter.’ My eyes lit up. I said, ‘Yes.’ ”

He barely could lift a pole when he first started.

“I was doing seven feet,” Hackett said. “It was pretty pathetic.”

Being able to only clear the height of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hardly discouraged Hackett. He became a student of pole vault instructor Anthony Curran, a former Crespi High and UCLA All-American.

“Within an hour, this guy had me up two feet [higher],” Hackett said.

Last season, Hackett won the City Section freshman-sophomore championship, clearing a City-record 13-8.

Last month, at the Los Angeles Invitational at the Sports Arena, he went 15-0.

“I want 16-7 this year,” he said, referring to the 30-year-old City pole vault record established by Bob Pullard of Los Angeles High in 1969.

No height is too high for Hackett, who has grown to 5-8, 125 pounds, and has added 10 inches to his waist, which is 32 inches, since he entered high school.

“I have these really big hands, really big feet, long arms but small body,” he said. “I’m waiting for my growth spurt.”

Hackett’s brother, Shawn, is 6-1 and was an All-East Valley League point guard for Grant’s basketball team.

His father, Paul, was a sprinter at Brigham Young, coached basketball at South Gate High and raises sheep-herding dogs at their La Tuna Canyon home.

“My dad’s into that stuff,” Hackett said. “He’s enthralled by it. Dogs barely listen to me when I tell them to stay.”

Pole vaulting is what enthralls Hackett.

“It’s just a rush,” he said. “It’s as close as man can get to flying. It’s the greatest feeling in the world.”

Hackett’s mother, Jan, a program coordinator at Verdugo Hills, wonders if there should be a support group for parents of pole vaulters.

“Those pole vaulters are all weird,” she said.

Said Hackett: “I guess we’re all a little warped. You have to be to go flying in the air upside down.”

Hackett does show promise on the ground. He spent last week on a field trip to Washington D.C. studying government and he wants to become a lawyer or FBI agent.

Next month, he’ll take part in a school play, playing the role of a mortician’s assistant.

“He’s not shy at all,” Hackett’s father said. “I know there’s not one social function he doesn’t go to.”

Hackett is so hyper he can’t watch television for more than five minutes without moving around.

“He’ll watch [the program] but he’ll get up from one chair to the next,” Paul said. “He moves all three chairs in the den. Shane wanders around the house. He won’t sit. He’s always cutting out [plastic] bottles for shin guards and trash cans for [knight] shields.”

It still doesn’t make sense how Hackett can love pole vaulting, considering he’s afraid of heights.

“I’ll look out a building high up and my knees will start shaking,” he said. “I remember going to Knott’s Berry Farm with my brother on the parachute ride. You go up seven stories. I was shaking the whole time. I had a death grip on the side of the cage.”

But give him a pole, and he turns into Batman or Rocket Man.

“It’s so great,” he said of flying through the air on a pole.

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Eric Sondheimer’s local column appears Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at (818) 772-3422.