Hi my name is Robert Jake Arnold but everyone calls me Jake. I am from Santa Rosa, Ca. and went to the University of Arizona and graduated in 2007 with a degree in Retail and Consumer Sciences and minor in General Business and Communications. I have always been into sports and this has been know since my first word which was “ball.” In High School I participated in Soccer, Football, X-country, Basketball and Track and Field. It was my love for Pole Vaulting and hurdling that ultimately made me chose to walk-on to the University of Arizona track and field team.
In 2002 I graduated from Maria Carrillo High School and decided to go to the University of Arizona for college that fall. When there I decided to tryout for the track team and became a walk-on decathlete. How did I chose to be a decathlete?
I broke my arm snowboarding. You ask how does breaking your arm cause you to be a decathlete. My senior year of High School I was really focused on pole vault and had been doing really well but decided to go snowboarding after basketball season and broke my arm so I couldn’t pole vault. I was very frustrated with a cast on just doing running workouts to get better in the 400 meters.
After about three weeks of this we were suppose to have a meet against two schools but it got cancelled and our coach, Danny Aldridge, decided to have a meet anyway with all of our athletes trying what ever events they wanted.
Well with cast on I decided to run the 110 Hurdles on our dirt track. I took three blocks starts over one hurdle and felt ready to go. Coach Aldridge was the starter and the other coaches ha stop watches at the finish line. He shot the gun and I was off. I was good over the hurdle and then hurdles 8, 9, and 10 I hit but I finished. My coaches looked at the time 15.87 which would have been a new school record. Well after that day i became a hurdler for my school. It was Coach Aldridge that suggested I do the 300 intermediate-hurdles because I had decent 400 meter speed and could hurdle so I tried it. After 2 1/2 months I was at the California State Meet finals in the 300 ImH and the pole vault. I ended up getting 10th in the Pole Vault and going 15 feet that year and placing 8th in the 300ImH running 38.82. Hurdles and pole vault were not the only events that i did. I did whatever the coach needed me to do at the meet o that we could win. I ran the 4x100, 4x400, High Jumped, and whatever else for that meet.
When people saw what I had done they had started to say that I should try the decathlon. After the California State meet I was called by University of California, Berkeley by Coach Ed Miller and he wanted me to come to Cal and do the decathlon. This was in June and I had decided to go to the University of Arizona and didn’t go to Cal but it was a real honor being asked by Cal to be on their track team because I had no other offers. Only a few weeks later I was in Coach Harvey’s office asking to walk on to the track team at the University of Arizona. He said come see us at the beginning of school and practice starts September 9th.
So I went out on September 9th and the rest is history…
ABOUT JAKE