NEWPORT HARBOR FEMALE ATHLETE OF THE YEAR: Stokke leaves older, wiser

Allison Stokke never fancied herself as the sort of athlete who peaked just as she was beginning.

But, in a way, she did.

Newport Harbor High’s Female Athlete of the Year won the most significant prize of her high school career, a CIF state title, as a freshman. She spent the next three years trying to reclaim that glory, but found herself falling short.

Despite a disappointing finish to her senior year — she finished fourth at this year’s CIF state final — Stokke has emerged stronger than ever, and ready to start vaulting for UC Berkeley.

Stokke set the national freshman pole vaulting record (12 feet, 8 inches) and won the CIF state title barely a year out of middle school, in a sport that she’d never tried before.

A burgeoning talent in her sport, Stokke had big dreams for her future.

She would get back to the CIF state final.

Eventually, she would clear 14 feet.

Projecting from the success of her freshman season, these were not unreasonable expectations.

Stokke’s sophomore year looked just as promising as her first, and she tied another national record for her age group when she reached 13-4 in her first meet of the season. A week later, she broke it when she cleared 13-5 3/4 .

But just as the track and field postseason was about to begin, her early fortune took a different turn, and instead of continuing to move toward her ultimate goal, Stokke was hampered by injury. She broke her right tibia attempting a vault.

“My coaches were trying to make me feel better,” Stokke said Tuesday, smiling. “They were like, ‘I don’t think it’s broken,’ and there’s this thing floating around.”

Stokke was waiting for her head to catch up with the ankle that now features a two-inch surgery scar, but that proved to be more difficult than she expected. The best vault of Stokke’s junior year was 12-9 at the CIF state final, where she finished second to Tori Anthony of Castilleja in Palo Alto, who vaulted 13-3.

“I was expecting if I could get in shape, I could get back to where I was,” Stokke said. “I physically was ready to jump high again, but mentally, it was hard to get back into it. When I first broke my ankle I was so ready to get back to it, and then I got used to being relaxed, and having nothing to do, and nowhere to be. It was hard to get myself motivated.”

By the time her senior year rolled around, she had recommitted herself. Stokke was once again ready to reclaim the state title she felt was calling her name, and she was ready to boost herself more than 14 feet off the ground to get it.

But there was one thing Stokke wasn’t ready for: a drove of photographers clicking away while she vaulted.

Sure there had been photographers at her meets throughout her career, but that was before she skyrocketed to Internet fame, before anonymous men started posting message board comments about her pole vaulting photographs that were anything but innocent.

The comfortable empty void that once occupied her head before she was about to vault was filled with worrisome thoughts.

Who’s going to see these photos?

What are they going to do with them?

When is this going to end?

Suddenly, everyone wanted to focus on her looks, or how she felt about being targeted because of her looks.

Her vault clearances were an afterthought, and it didn’t matter that she was the sort of girl who loves Harry Potter (but not in the freakish, dress-up-and-pretend-to-be-awizard sort of way) or that, like most teenagers, she’s much more comfortable around friends and family than total strangers.

“I’d be at a meet, and I wasn’t used to having a camera in my face, or hearing a hundred camera clicks right behind me,” Stokke said. “And then thinking about, ‘oh, who’s going to be looking at these pictures.’ Right now, I regret thinking about that and just not completely focusing on what I was doing. I think that just took a while to get used to it.

“From what I’ve been told, the better I’m going to get, the more attention I’m going to have. I think that’s just something I have to get used to.”

Her newfound popularity had catapulted her into the spotlight of the national media, and the enormity of it all converged at this year’s CIF Southern Section Masters Meet, where there were more photographers clicking away and more reporters requesting interviews than Stokke was accustomed to.

That scene, combined with CIF officials bungling her vault measurements, made Stokke want to crawl into a hole. Stokke finished the night with a height of 13-3 1/2 . She easily qualified for the state meet, but CIF officials had failed raise the vault standard an additional six inches, but told her they had. Stokke, and the officials thought she had vaulted a personal-best 13-8 until, upon closer inspection, the officials realized they measured incorrectly.

When she sat to talk with reporters in Norwalk that night, Stokke frowned, her answers were short, and she rarely made eye contact.

“I was angry,” Stokke said. “There was all the media stuff, and they messed up my height. It screwed up my mind.”

A distracted and disappointed Stokke finished fourth at the CIF state final, with a clearance of 12-3, not at all close to her goal of 14 feet.

“I had it in practice for sure,” Stokke said. “I don’t know what it was. I should have done it at the end of the year. I don’t know if it was more distractions, I guess, that I need to get used to.”

She shrugged.

“Next year.”

Tuesday, Stokke was nothing like the brooding version of herself that appeared at the Masters Meet.

She was confident, and smiling, and comfortable with herself.

“People would come up to me and say, ‘oh, I feel so bad for you about all this. It’s terrible, they shouldn’t be doing this,’” Stokke said. “They’re right. They shouldn’t be doing it. But it’s not going to stop, for anyone else, for me or anyone. I’m obviously not the only one this has happened to. But it’s inevitable. It’s something you can’t stop, so you might as well just go with it.”

SORAYA NADIA McDONALD may be reached at (714) 966-4613 or soraya.mcdonald@latimes.com.