DAILY PILOT HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETE OF THE WEEK:

Blaine Bolus discovered the secret to his success the hard way.

The people watching him, the pressure he felt, had as much to do with winning as the power in his legs and the spikes in his shoes, something he discovered after a year of competing on the junior varsity level.

When Bolus, a junior, transferred from Sage Hill to Corona del Mar High after his freshman year, he was barred from varsity competition. Per CIF Southern Section rules, he could not compete on the varsity level for one year. As a sophomore, Bolus was a varsity-caliber athlete, but he was forced to compete in junior varsity or frosh-soph competitions.

He hated it.

“It was awful,” Bolus said. “I can’t even describe how bad it was. It wasn’t fun.”

Bolus was itching to compete with the big dogs, and it showed at the Golden West Invitational, when he tied, then broke, Greg Ruzicka’s 34-year old triple jump record. Jumpers at the Golden West Invitational had six jumps. On his third, Bolus tied Ruzicka’s record of 45 feet, 7 inches.

The coach who’d accompanied him to the Golden West event called CdM Coach Bill Sumner to tell him the news.

“Coach Sumner said, ‘That’s not good enough. He has to break it,’ ” Bolus said.

The Southern Section has since changed the rule, allowing freshmen to transfer without penalty.

“The motivation isn’t the same,” Bolus said. “It’s completely different. It’d be the same as playing on the JV football team or the JV basketball team, anything. No one’s there to watch JV except the parents of the kids who do JV.”

Even though he’s on the varsity team, Bolus is still competing against himself. He’s broken his own school record twice in the past two weeks, at the sort of high-stakes events he relishes.

The best Bolus has jumped at a CdM practice is 44-7.

He imbibes the noise from a big crowd, and the intensity of competing against a large field, and it spurts out through his feet, into the triple-jump pit.

“It’s a lot more adrenaline,” Bolus said. “You focus a lot more.”

Bolus broke his own record in the triple jump Saturday at the Orange County Championships when he jumped 46 feet, 7 1/4 inches to take first place. In the week prior, Bolus jumped 45-11 3/4 at the Arcadia Invitational.

Ruzicka, who competed as a jumper at UC Irvine, was impressed with Bolus’ form. Both have the same long, lithe sort of bodies that make for skilled jumpers.

Bolus is CdM’s best when it comes to mastering the movement that preserves the most energy in the triple jump: keeping his leg under his hip in each phase of the jump instead of having it spayed in front of him.

Bolus hasn’t added weight-training to his workout regimen yet, but he plans to start next season. Once he does, Ruzicka said, his jump distances will get even better.

Currently, Bolus does plyometrics, and bounding (running and hopping exercises).

“He’s got a lot of potential,” Ruzicka said. “I think he’s going to take that record out a lot farther. I hope he does.”

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