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Tougher than rock
USC training ground a paradise for throwers
While USC upgrades its sports facilities, the school's track and field hammer throwers still toss iron on the same gravel parking lot along Key Road in Columbia. Here, Mike Zajac, a red shirt sophomore from Lynchburg, VA practices his throw on Tuesday, May 19, 2009.
Erik Campos /Erik Campos/ecampos@thestate.com
CommentsIf USC fans are familiar with the gravel parking lot on Key Road, it is as their tailgating home for six or seven Saturdays every fall.
The 600-space lot makes up for its lack of aesthetic value with its proximity to Williams-Brice Stadium, which sits about a quarter-mile away just past the Cockaboose Railroad.
But the gravel lot is home to another part of Gamecocks athletics.
When the Chevy Suburbans and Winnebagos clear out, leaving behind chicken bones, bottle caps and other tailgating remnants, the hammer throwers and shot putters from the Gamecocks’ track team return to stake their claim to a hardscrabble piece of property one thrower called “the manliest place you can have a track practice.”
Of course, women are welcome at the ‘Gravel Pit,’ as well. In fact, three of USC’s four Olympians who trained at Key Road were female throwers: Dawn Ellerbe, Lisa Misipeka and Michelle Fournier.
The Gamecocks can practice the discus, shot and javelin at Weems Baskin Track, but the hammer throwers were banished to Key Road because the metal balls were leaving ankle-twisting land mines on the women’s soccer practice field.
Mike Sergent, the Gamecocks’ throws coach since 1997, embraces the history of the site, nestled in an industrial area between Shop and Bluff roads.
When workers poured a new concrete throwing circle a few years ago, Sergent asked them to leave a piece of the original — a 3-foot slab of concrete that sits next to the current circle.
“It’s kind of like (Howard’s Rock) at Clemson,” Sergent said.
Sergent’s athletes still throw the shots and hammers used by throwers Brad Snyder and John Stoikos in the 1990s.
“There’s a lot of history in those jagged, rusty implements,” shot putter Jason Cook said.
Cook, one of eight USC male athletes competing in this week’s NCAA Outdoor Championship, said it only takes a couple of throws to knock the rust off the aging shots.
The current throwers have continued another offbeat tradition at Key Road.
On the Fourth of July following his final season 10 years ago, Irmo native Bert Sorin marked the occasion by launching a flaming hammer into the night sky — a feat captured on videotape and posted on the Web.
A group of throwers kept the tradition alive on Cinco de Mayo last year with a kerosene-soaked tube sock, a hammer, lighter and sense of adventure.
Throwers like the freedom of practicing off campus. Cook said throwers often park a pickup near the ring, crank up the classic rock and yell as loud as they please while they heave the weights.
But most practices are more tranquil, like a recent midweek workout attended by Katie Vuckovich, Stacee Roberts and Michael Zajac, the lone hammer thrower on the men’s team.
A Killdeer bird is protecting her eggs on the gravel just outside the thrower’s cage, while weeds sprout up from the rocks where the weights land. Zajac uncorks a couple of throws and sets out to retrieve the hammers — a ritual interrupted only when Sergent tells him to let a couple of passing cars go by before using one of the lighter hammers.
Zajac, a junior from Lynchburg, Va., admits being skeptical when he saw the Key Road site on his recruiting visit.
“I was like, ‘Wait, we’re throwing in a gravel parking lot,’ ” he said. “But once I got here, it’s like a second home.
“You can come out here and not really worry about tearing up any grass. It makes you focus on throwing, not the aesthetics of it.”
Tailgaters eventually might have the run of the place. USC’s long-range facilities plan calls for the renovation of Weems Baskin to include a throws area — big enough to contain the hammers — located roughly at the site of the Roundhouse parking lot.
USC coach Curtis Frye, who parks at the lot for football games, figures that gives opposing recruiters a few more years to warn prospects about where the Gamecocks’ throwers practice.
But beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
“Some people see it and say, ‘It’s a gravel parking lot,’ ” Sergent said.
Cook and others look at the empty beer cans, painted parking spaces and divots in the gravel and see a thrower’s paradise.
Reach Person at (803) 771-8496.
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