Rick Suhr says he has no use for the spotlight. Can you blame him??In his one big moment on the national stage, he was unfairly vilified for a perceived berating of Jenn Stucyznski after she won a silver medal four years ago in Beijing. People wondered what was the guy's problem.

What they should have been asking was, What's his secret?'

Really, now. Can someone explain it? How in the world could one man have produced so many elite pole vaulters? In an area that has been otherwise irrelevant in major track and field for decades, how could five national pole vaulting champions have come out of one makeshift training facility outside Suhr's home in Churchville.

Is there some unknown coaching technique, some mystical method for inspiring athletes? Some magical jumping beans, perhaps?

"It is a secret," said Jenn Suhr [formerly Stucyznski], who married Rick two years ago. She tells her husband all the time, in fact, that he's the best-kept secret in sports.

"It's amazing what he's done, going back to 2004," she said. "I look at all the records. He's produced a national champion every year. That's too many years and too many people for it to be a coincidence. It all revolves around one person, and that's him."

No, it's hardly a coincidence that three women's pole vaulters from Western New York will be in Eugene, Ore., next weekend at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials. Suhr is the defending Olympic silver medalist, a 10-time national champion who is considered a virtual lock to make the American team.

Mary Saxer, who broke the girls' national record seven times at Lancaster High, will be there. So will Medina's Janice Keppler, who vaulted in college at Eastern Michigan and Arkansas and finished second last winter in the indoor U.S. Open at Madison Square Garden.

Suhr, Saxer and Keppler were all ranked among the top 10 in the nation recently. All three got their start in Churchville, where Suhr has been producing champions since putting a couple of quonset huts end-to-end to serve as a pole vaulting practice facility about 15 years ago.

"They all came out of a steel building in Buffalo," Rick said. "That doesn't make sense. I don't care what the records of the Bills and Sabres are. We've got the best pole vaulters in the country, hands down. I don't want to toot my own horn, but it is what it is."

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Coaching up the talent