In just over 14-1/2 months during 2010 and 2011, Western Washington University track and field athlete Ryan Brown won a school-record four individual National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division II national championships, two each in the indoor and outdoor men's pole vault.
 
Putting that in perspective, just 12 Vikings have captured individual national crowns over the 119-year history of athletics at Western. And, besides Brown, only two have repeated, each of them having two apiece.
 
And of those multiple champions, Brown is the only one to win national titles in back-to-back years, doing so in both indoor and outdoor competition.
During that stretch from March 13, 2010 to May 28, 2011, Brown was a four-time United States Track & Field Coaches Association DII All-American and earned WWU Male Athlete of the Year honors for 2009-10 and 2010-11. He established school and Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC) records in both indoor and outdoor pole vault competition with a personal best of 17-8 1/2 at the 2010 outdoor nationals.
 
But while the last two years of Brown's collegiate career were monumental, that wasn't always the case for him. In fact, saying his career got off to a slow start would be an understatement.
 
Brown's older brother, D.J., had been a state champion and school record setting pole vaulter at Squalicum High School, located on the northeast side of Bellingham. Ryan, who placed seventh at state as a junior, entered his final year with the Storm looking to win state and better his brother's standard. He did neither.
 
As a prep senior, Brown no-heighted at district, which meant he didn't qualify for state. That took him out of the recruiting mix for major college programs and gave Western a chance.
 
"We knew he was a good vaulter," said long-time Western head track coach Pee Wee Halsell. "When he no-heighted at district, that opened the door for us."
 
Despite that major disappointment, Brown kept life in perspective. He wanted to eventually become a chiropractor, and Western had a respected kinesiology program. And he looked at the opportunity of continuing vaulting for the Vikings as a bonus. Brown viewed it as a simple decision.
 
"Pole vaulting is something I do, but not who I am," he said at the time. "There are more important things in my life: my relationship with God, with my family, my schooling. Being content is a big thing. I am content with where I am."
 
And by coming to Western, Brown would continue to be coached by Dick Henrie, a Viking assistant coach and pole vault guru who had already helped numerous Whatcom County high school vaulters for over three decades.
 
"We talked to him about coming to Western," said Henrie. "But he didn't get any money to come here. He was a one-event specialist, and wasn't really highly recruited."
 
That, said Henrie, is what makes Brown special.
 
"Most kids would have quit (after missing state)," said Henrie. "He didn't get the attention in high school. When he won virtually every award you can win, you would never have known it from being around him because he didn't talk about it.
 
"He's got the perfect attitude about life. He doesn't get his sense of worth from vaulting. He does other things … I've learned as much from him as a human being as he's learned from me."
 
But being an even mannered personality with an excellent attitude is not enough to propel a 180-pound human being more than 17 feet off the ground using only a long, bendable pole.
 
Probably more than any other track and field event, pole vaulting requires the perfect combination of strength, speed, technique and fearlessness. And Brown possessed all those traits.
 
At 6-foot-3 with speed and the "hops" to do a little high jumping at Western just for fun, he looked like a shooting guard on the Vikings basketball team. He also had the advantage of working with two of the top pole vault coaches in the state in Squalicum High coach Rod Kammenga and Henrie, and could train all year long out of the elements at the indoor Bellingham Sportsplex.
 
But Brown recognized that other top vaulters have the same and maybe even more physical advantages. What separated the good from the great was the mental advantage.
 
"Pole vaulting is 10 percent physical and 90 percent mental," he said. "If you're not there mentally and don't have the drive, you can't succeed."
 
All of which made Brown the complete package.
 
"He was tall and fast and smart with a great attitude," said Halsell. "He was a good team player, a great competitor, a student of pole vaulting. And he'd been fortunate to have great coaches in Rod and Dick."
 
Brown's rise from a good high school vaulter to national champion college vaulter was steady. His freshman season at Western, he won the first of his four indoor GNAC titles. As a sophomore, he qualified for the 2009 indoor nationals, placing 13th out of 14. It was then, as he saw the competition at nationals, that Brown realized what heights he could reach.
 
"Something sparked up in me; I realized they were just like me," he remembered. "The only thing holding me back was my mind. I just needed to step up and do it."
 
Even Halsell and Henrie, who watched as Brown grew stronger and more mature, never expected him to do what he did his junior season. He reached 17 feet during the indoor season and was ranked as the top Division II pole vaulter going into the national meet.
 
There he opened at 16 feet and made 16-11 on his first try before missing at 17-3. But his only remaining competition also missed at 17-3, and Brown was declared the champion on fewer misses. In track tradition, Brown was given the championship trophy by his vaulting coach."
 
Dick (Henrie) got to hand out the trophies, and he was kind of emotional," said Brown. "It was really cool. It took a while to sink in. A couple of days later, I thought, 'I'm a national champion.' But then it was like, 'Now let's go; the outdoor season starts right away.'"
 
During the 2010 outdoor season, Brown became the conference's first vaulter to reach 17 feet both indoors and outdoors. He won the conference title. But it was all a warm-up for the national meet, where Brown did what all athletes dream of: executing his best when it counted the most. "The outdoor nationals was my best meet ever," said Brown. "Dick described it as very business-like, having fun, being relaxed. It all came together."
 
It sure did. Brown soared an incredible 17 feet, 8-1/2 inches, clearing the bar by nearly a foot, to break school and conference records and win his second national title. He also became the first Viking in nearly a century of track and field competition to win more than one individual national championship.
 
And don't dismiss this as "small college" stuff; Brown's height was the same as the winning vault for the NCAA I outdoor title.
 
For Brown, it came easy — or at least it was easy to describe.
 
"To have the perfect jump, the most important thing is the mind," he said. "You have to visualize clearing the bar. I always imagine clearing the bar 6 inches above where it is. The good ones feel really easy. When you fly over you know it."
 
After that perfect jump, the accolades came flowing in. He was named the GNAC Male Indoor and Outdoor Track and Field Athlete of the Year, the NCAA II West Region Field Athlete of the Year for the second season in a row, and the school's Male Athlete of the Year, a rarity for a junior.
 
In 2011, Brown took the indoor title for the second straight year and set his sights on doing the same thing in the outdoor competition.
 
But at the Stanford Invitational he uncharacteristically no-heighted. And that happened again at the GNAC Championships, where he was looking for a second straight outdoor crown and sixth indoor and outdoor title. It may have been no coincidence that Henrie because of work-related duties as recreation manager at the Bellingham Parks and Recreation Department, was unable to make either of those trips.
 
Even so, Brown entered the national outdoor competition with a national-leading DII mark, almost a foot ahead of his closest competition, and 11th best in all the NCAA.
 
He went into the meet with the mindset that, "I'm not going to worry about defending my title, and I'm going to focus on having fun. I'm not going to worry about whether I win or lose. I just want to get consumed in vaulting."
 
"It's definitely more difficult the second time," Brown said prior to his last collegiate national meet. "In 2010, I came in with the No. 1 mark and I knew I had everyone coming after me, but I hadn't had a great showing in a national-level competition before. I didn't feel like the pressure was on me, so I just relaxed and jumped the best I could. Now, I felt like I know I'm capable of winning and I have to go out and do it."
 
The result was another national crown as Brown cleared 17-1 3/4.
 
After graduating from Western with a degree in kinesiology with a pre-chiropractic emphasis, Brown decided to take some time off and try to continue working on his vaulting with the goal of qualifying for the Summer Olympics.
 
"That's something you always dream about doing - going up against the best in the world," Brown said.
 
"When we trained indoors (in Bellingham), I had to go to the Sportsplex to work out, and they had a rubberized surface that is nothing like what I use in competition," Brown continued. "I made do, but if I wanted to be a top-level vaulter and take a step toward that next level more seriously, I needed to train in a better facility and train around people that want to be elite, too. Those were the two things I was really looking for."
 
"Vaulting became a lifestyle for me. I love being able to find the therapeutic content in it and the training aspects. It's the most technical event in track and field, and for me it's a lot of fun. It's part of me. It's not all of me, but it's a big part of me."
 
Perhaps because of the amazing jumps in improvement and the potential he had to be even better, Brown was not afraid to keep setting the bar higher – both literally and figuratively.
 
Brown moved down to Seattle to intern at InHealth while continuing his training for the Olympic Trials with Pat Licari, the jump coach at the University of Washington. He trained with an elite group of pole vaulters and long jumpers who all had their sights set on Olympic standards.
 
In doing so, Brown put off chiropractic school to pursue his training.
 
"When I saw that I was ranked 11th (among all college vaulters), I thought, 'You can be in the Olympics. You can get it.'" Brown said. "It is the belief that separates the Olympians. People don't want to fail, but I wasn't afraid to fail. They (Olympians) were just like me: their mind set, confidence, belief,"
 
Was that all unrealistic talk from a dreamer? Going 17-8 in a Division II meet is one thing; reaching the 19-foot level, which is Olympic material, is another.
 
While being relatively young to be looking at 19-feet, Brown spent the next four years (2011-15) pursuing that goal before deciding to end his professional athletic career. His pole vaulting had gone well, though not reaching the standard he had hoped for.
 
In 2013, Brown married the former Ashli (Kirk) and they had a son, Alden, in 2016 and a daughter, Adalee, in 2018.
 
From 2015 to 2017, Brown worked at Boeing in its Industrial Athletic Program, an innovative, voluntary workplace program designed to improve the health, wellness and productivity of employees. He then transferred to the company's fitness program at a gym for employees and retirees.
 
Eventually Brown made the decision to pursue the chiropractic career that he had put on hold for pole vaulting. In 2018, he gained admission to the University of Western States, a health sciences university in Portland, Oregon, dedicated to the advancement of integrated, patient-centered care.
 
Over the next three years with no summers off, Brown graduated in December of 2020 as a Doctor of Chiropractic. He also earned a Bachelor of Science degree in human biology.
 
Brown returned to Bellingham and after a short time at Murry Chiropractic & Associates, is now at Ferndale Chiropractic. His ultimate goal is to start his own practice, one that would be sports focused and allow him to work with athletes.
 
"Western athletics gave me a platform for discovering the importance of balance in my life," said Brown, now 32. "It also taught me to be grateful for the people who guide and support me, because achievements are rarely achieved by an individual alone."
 
While his Olympic dream did not happen, Brown continues to accomplish many other goals that in the scheme of things are much more important.
 
Presented by Paul Madison who served 48 years as sports information director at WWU from 1966 to 2015. He is now in his sixth year as the school's Athletics Historian.