Like many athletes, a turning point in their careers occurs while watching another great athlete compete on television. This happened to Elders in 1968 when he saw American Dick Fosbury take a revolutionary approach to high jumping. The Oregon State student cleared the high jump bar at 7-feet, 4.25 inches to win the Olympic golf medal, employing a jumping style of his own invention. Fosbury had invented the ‘Fosbury Flop,’ where the bar is cleared with the head and shoulders first, with his back parallel to the ground; a technique which is still in use today.

"I was scissoring (another high jump form) 4-feet, 11-inches in 8^th grade," said Elders. "By my freshman year, I was jumping 6-2 (using the Flop) and my coach was amazed. Nobody was straddling or rolling anymore, they were flopping." Elders consistently improved on his form, jumping 6-feet, 6.5 inches as a sophomore, 6-9 as a junior and 6-10.5 as a senior. The latter mark is still the high jump record at Fresno High School. "I call there every year to see if the record still stands," Elders laughed.

Unfortunately for Elders, another California prep athlete had discovered "The Flop" in the person of Dwight Stones. At the California State Track Meet in 1971, Stones set the national high school high jump record at 7-feet, 1.5-inches. Elders finished second with a fine jump of 6-9. At the Golden West event, Stones and Elders clashed again and both leaped 6-10, but Stones won the event with fewer misses.

Later in the summer, the two jumpers squared off again, this time in a Junior Olympic competition where the top finishers would qualify to face a squad of athletes from the U.S.S.R. "I beat him," Elders said, with a broad smile crossing his face, discussing his on-going competition with Stones. "I jumped 6-9 and he jumped 6-8. I placed third, but I beat him."

Stones would later earn a bronze medal in both the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games and set the world record three times. He is now involved in real estate in the Tustin area, and is probably best known for his television commentary work on major track and field events, including the Olympics. He re-enters the Elders story a bit later.

After high school, Elders went to Fresno City College, where unleashed his best jump, a 7-2 effort at an all-comers meet. His high jump career met an unfortunate end, when he was injured while high jumping in the rain. "I tore the ligaments in my left leg on my approach and takeoff. I was jumping with one-half inch spikes on a wet synthetic track surface." As you might surmise, damaged knee ligaments and high jumping are mutually exclusive concepts.

After a year spent at Colorado State, Uncle Sam called and Elders was drafted into the Army. He spent the balance of his military career on inactive standby. By now Elders had relocated to Maui, where he worked with his father in landscape and maintenance, later owning his own company.

But the allure of track and field was never far away and Kerry accepted the position as assistant track and field coach at Maui High School. That year, the team which had a total of seven athletes, won the Hawaii State Track Meet. "We had two relay teams, two long jumpers, a sprinter and a 300-meter hurdler," said Elders of the team. "It was the first time an outer-island school had ever won the state meet."

Elders was offered the head coaching job the following year. That was the good news. The bad news is that all of the members of the championship team were gone. Elders knew he was faced with a challenge. "It was an uphill struggle. I was surprised that I took the job after I knew all of the kids were going to graduate."

The thing you have to understand about Elders is that he is a track and field lifer. Several long stretches of our interview included discussions of track athletes we had seen compete. "I grew up in high school watching guys like (sprinters) Tommie Smith, Lee Evans and Juan Carlos compete. I saw (Olympic long jump champion) Randy Williams triple jump 50-feet, 11 inches in high school. In 1970 I got to see (distance runner) Steve Prefontaine run at Stanford."

Elders, while on a trip Oregon, decided to drive to Coos Bay to see where the legendary Prefontaine (1951-1975) grew up. Assuming that this somewhat unusual pilgrimage was undertaken some time during his youth, Elders sheepishly admitted that the trip occurred last year. He admits that he’s hooked on the sport of track and field.

After a 7-year sojourn to Wisconsin, Elders moved to Coronado in 2000 and became a volunteer track coach at CHS, in part because niece Jessica Lunt was a middle distance running star for the Islanders. Jessica is the daughter Kerry’s sister and Coronado resident Claudia Lunt and is in the ranks of fine Islander prep runners that includes Samantha Piper and Katherine Wingert.

The Elders clan is somewhat spread out. Kerry’s father Ron, a Navy veteran now 81, lives in Coronado. Kerry’s older brother Garron lives on Oahu. Kerry also has a son Erin, aged 22. Elders and his wife Heidi, who is a secretary in the intensive care unit at Scripps La Jolla, reside in the South Bay.

Soon Elders found himself on the Coronado track and field staff in a more permanent role, coaching the jumpers and hurdlers. About this time Elders had another revelation. "I found out that is wasn’t a very good coach when I started coaching at Maui High School. There are two important elements to coaching. One is knowing what (the event) you’re talking about. And two is establishing a personal relationship with the kids. It’s harder to coach the event than do it."

When asked what he looks for in athletes who are willing to repeatedly hurl themselves into the air, Elders was succinct in his reply. "It’s athleticism, absolutely, without a doubt. It’s an intangible thing. I can watch their body language and usually determine after watching them take three or four jumps, how long it will take to make them a good high jumper."

When he returned to Coronado, Elders found three willing and talented athletes who wanted to learn the intricacies of "The Flop," in Jamie Klages, Reid McLean and Adam Munns. This year, the trio added a fourth member, sophomore Sarah Player and together they formed "Kerry’s Crew." Most remarkably the quartet qualified en masse for the CIF San Diego Section finals in the high jump, with Klages and Munns advancing to the state meet.

In a few short years, Elders has turned Coronado High School, with its enrollment of only 900 students, into a hotbed of high jumping. "This was a spectacular year for jumpers," Elders said of his Crew. "It’s going to be a hard gap to fill."

Klages, who started at a relatively modest height of 5-0 as a freshman, now co-owns the section record in the high jump, by virtue of a 5-foot, 10.25-inch jump earlier this year. She finished fifth in the state last year as a junior and won the San Diego section title this year. Klages, owns four jumps over 5-9 this year.

Dwight Stones re-enters our discussion briefly at this point. Looking for ways to help improve the performances of his athletes, Elders sent pictures of Klages to Stones, asking for advice to help improve her technique. Said Elders of friendly rival Stones, "he made a couple of suggestions." Sort of like the mountain going to Mohammed for assistance.

Assessing his own coaching contribution to Klages’ success, Elders modestly says, "I helped somewhere in there. Jamie was very consistent this year. I try to stress to the kids to stay steady. If you stay steady and consistent, you will be in every meet. The approach (running toward the bar) is 90 percent of a high jump and we practice that time and time again. Jamie was a good student and she learned well. We’ve had jumpers reach the state meet now for 3 years in a row and we’ve had CIF champions over the last several years. We have a really good chance to make Coronado a track school."

The ‘we’ in the previous sentence includes Head Track Coach George Green and Elders’ fellow assistants Mel Bechtel, Jack Nash and Doug Stone. "Working with the other coaches is great and we are a pretty good team. I love coaching at Coronado High school. We’ve been around each other enough that we get along really well. I think it’s good that everybody there (on the coaching staff) has participated in track at a very high level. They’ve been there and competed at the level where these kids are."

Coaching the high jump can have its comic moments as well. Most major track meets don’t allow direct contact between the coaches and high jumpers. As a result, Elders has to find locations from which he can both see his jumpers perform and then try to impart some advice to them. "It’s frustrating in track. I’ve stood on dumpsters and been behind fences coaching. I feel like the purpose in coaching is to make the kids better, which is difficult to do being so restricted. It’s not coach friendly, especially when you get to the bigger meets."

In addition to working with the high school athletes, Elders also coaches the Coronado Middle School high jumpers, who numbered eight in all this year. "We’ll have four or five kids from the middle school jump next year at the high school. Probably three girls and two or three guys will jump." They will join Player, who if not for Klages, would be the school record holder in the high jump. Player is also a gifted 300-meter hurdler and qualified for the CIF Sectional finals in that event as well.

As you might expect being a prep track coach doesn’t pay the bills. Five years ago when he returned to Coronado, Kerry was a care giver for Admiral Victor Long, who lived to the age of 97. Elders is currently the head of a five-person team that provides care for Vice Admiral James Stockdale and his wife Sybil.

Elders explains how the 3-year relationship with the Stockdales began. "Admiral Long brought me to the Stockdales. He was a great guy with a great personality. Working with the Stockdales is the best relationship I’ve had with anyone I’ve ever worked with. I consider them to be very good friends. Working for them and knowing Sybil has been amazing. You never know who is going to be on the phone. It might be Ross Perot or the secretary of the Navy."

As a coach, Elders has had a positive impact on a number of kids, not the least of whom are the three graduating members of the 2005 high jump squad. Klages, who was named The San Diego Union-Tribune’s High School Female Athlete of the Year, will employ her jumping skills in her other athletic pursuit as a scholarship soccer goalie at the University of Nebraska next year. Munns plans to continue his high jumping career at UCSD in the fall. McLean, who has the makings of a fine multi-event track athlete (pentathlon or decathlon), will matriculate to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and continue his track and field career there.

The personable Elders will continue to work with Player, and any other kids who have the unique athleticism required to be successful in the high jump. But Elders has already done what many great athletes aren’t able to accomplish; take their own unique athletic gifts as a starting point and coach others to be better.