May 22, 2009

Stuart Kantor
Special to Rivals High

When Bruce Jenner calls to say you've come a long way ? but in the same breath, warns against complacency - one listens.

For Curtis Beach, this call came a couple of weeks after he obliterated Ryan Theriault's (Las Vegas, 1993) U.S. high school decathlon mark at the Arcadia Invitational in April.

Beach won nine out of 10 events and amassed a spectacular 7,909 points, the only high school athlete ever to surpass 7,500 points.

"I came into the competition with a great mindset," Beach said. "I wasn't stressed, I was well prepared, and I felt great mentally. I live for track. I have a will to improve, and I've had it for years."

Beach's will to improve was never more evident than at the Arcadia Invitational, where personal bests in the high jump (6-9.50), 400 (48.16) and 1,500 (4:09.48) were trumped only by his javelin throw, an increase of 25 feet over his previous best.

"I'm not a natural thrower," Beach said. "I'm getting the hang of it, learning how to get power. And what makes the decathlon interesting is that a little improvement, say 155 feet to 175 feet in the javelin, is worth lots of points."

Comparisons to Dan O'Brien and Brian Clay have surfaced on Internet message boards, but Beach is reticent to succumb to the hype.

"I'm on the right track, but I'm not going to let any of this get to my head because I'm not an Olympic champion yet," Beach said. "I have a lot more work to do."

For Beach, who proclaims that "track is my social life," the love of running started early.

"I used to chase my grandma's horse Lobo for hours, so my parents signed me up for track," he said.

Organized running actually commenced in cross country, thus his love for the 1,500. And then after his sixth grade summer, coach Jim Ciccarello introduced him to the multis.

"Coach Ciccarello is a huge part of my success," Beach said. "He challenged me to try everything from the 100 to the 3,000 to the hurdles, and then to the pentathlon. I was never able to pick a specialty event; I liked them all. Indecisiveness is why I'm a decathlete."

At age 7, Beach played soccer. "I didn't know track existed." As to be expected, his youth coach made the team run around the field for warmups.

"I asked the coach if I could run around the entire complex, instead of just the soccer field," Beach said.

His passion was evident, yet it's his rare mix of endurance and speed that make Beach such a unique athlete and propelled him to No. 2 all-time on the U.S. pentathlon list. At the National Scholastic Indoor Championships (March 13-15; New York Armory), Beach eclipsed all his prior year's point totals and became just the fourth high schooler to exceed 4,000 points. He trails only Donovan Kilmartin (Eagle, Colo.) ? 4,303 to 4,127.

"My goal was to just break 4,000 points," Beach said. "I'm not surprised I got as high of a score as I did, but it'll take a very long time for anyone to come close to Kilmartin's mark."

Beach's former Albuquerque Academy teammate and current Stanford freshman Benjamin Johnson told Beach there are three areas of life to worry about: social, academic and athletic. "You can be mediocre in all three, but only great in two."

No advice has left quite an impression on the 2008 Gatorade New Mexico Boys Track & Field Athlete of the Year.

"It's an easy decision: academic and athletic," Beach said. "This is how I live my life."

Currently, Beach's life consists of incredible time management skills to juggle his frenzied training schedule. Along with three running workouts per week, designed to enhance speed, endurance and anaerobic conditioning, he mixes in shoulder stability exercises and core work. And then the fun begins.

Coach Adam Kedge, who's in charge of conditioning and running, then delegates the technical work to coach Stacey Price for hurdles, coach Frank Soto (a firefighter by trade) for jumps, coach Bill Frangos for throws and coaches George Provolt and Matt Hull for the vault.

Beach's athletic accomplishments have landed him a scholarship to Duke, where he'll train under coach Shawn Wilbourn.

"Duke was a clear first choice [over Oregon, Cal-Berkley, Rice, Texas A&M and Baylor]," Beach said. "Coach Wilbourn is an outstanding coach, Duke's a great academic fit for me and it'll be a great place to live for four years. The coaching staff has vastly improved over recent years, and everything's on the rise."

Great success for the future sports marketing major seems to be a family trait. His cousin is the current New Mexico Attorney General, his great uncle served as New Mexico's governor for three terms, his grandfather was a state senator and his aunt is currently in the New Mexico House of Representatives.

And this is just his mom's side of the family.

His father and three uncles all played college basketball, and his aunt Sandra (Sandy Beach) was a nine-time national champion in cross country and track for her age group and a scholarship athlete at Arizona State.

For the boy who used to designate a pair of lucky socks for each group of events, the bar has been set quite high. But if his results from the New Mexico Athletic Association State Track & Field Championships can be used as a barometer of future success, Curtis Beach is well on his way to unparalleled heights.

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