BY TIM MORRIS
Staff Writer
As Debra Vento sees it, she’s ahead of schedule.A high school national champion at Freehold Borough in the high jump, Vento has quickly become one of the best college jumpers in the country, having earned All-American honors indoors and outdoors three times and counting at Duke University.
Vento, a junior at Duke, finished third at last year’s outdoor NCAA championships and has raised her personal best and school record to 6-1 1/2.
“I didn’t expect the way things turned out last year,” she said. “I jumped 6 feet at every [outdoor] meet and was third at the NCAAs.”
This spring, the Blue Devil jumper has collected her first Atlantic Coast Conference Championship, jumping a stadium record 5-10 3/4 at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., last month. While it was her first ACC title, it was the sixth time she made the All-ACC Team.
She followed her ACC title up with a fifth place at the Penn Relays in Philadelphia, jumping 5-10 1/2. This weekend, the Blue Devils will be in Princeton for the ECAC championships. She has won two indoor ECAC titles already and is looking for her first outdoor crown (she was second last year).
The Blue Devil has already qualified for the NCAA East Regionals on May 26-27 in Greensboro, N.C., which are the first step toward the NCAAs, which are June 7-10 in Sacramento, Calif.
Vento plans on jumping her pb and better before the outdoor season is over. She is working on a new approach on her run up to the bar that is quite different than one she used in high school, and it hasn’t quite clicked. She said that she is technically improved from her high school days and it is just a matter of time before her new approach, which is generating more speed on her lift-off, meshes with her technique. When it does, she expects to soar higher than ever.
“I’m running deeper into the bar on more of a curve and accelerating on my last few steps,” she explained. “It was frustrating indoors, but I’m working on it.”
Also, a bout with tendinitis in her right knee last fall put her training behind schedule. She’s playing catch-up and figures to be peaking at NCAA time.
Vento noted that there is very little to compare between high school and college.
“The biggest difference is that there is good competition at every meet,” she said.
Then there is the commitment college athletics requires.
“Your whole life is track,” she said. “You’re practicing every day. We jump two days a week, do drills and running the other days and weight lift twice a week.
“Sometimes I miss not being in more than one sport,” she added. At Freehold Borough, Vento was a standout soccer player.
With her life at Durham down to studies and jumping, it hasn’t left Vento much time to be a Cameron Crazy (fans at Duke University basketball games).
“I’ve gone to a couple of games,” she said. “Mostly, I’m in my room.”
Vento will graduate from Duke next year, but isn’t ready to leave Durham just yet. The Olympic Trials are in 2008 in Eugene, Ore., and she wants to be there. She’ll spend next year becoming a full-time athlete, devoting all of her energies to making it to the Trials, and giving herself the best shot that she has to place in the top three, which would make her an Olympian.