Kelsey Koty has six blank weeks in her life -- first in a coma and then in intensive care. Still, she can't wait to sprint down a runway again and fly in the pole vault, the daredevil sport that almost killed her.

	Dare

	Fili

The sophomore at Eastern Washington University survived a head injury in an event that one research group called the most dangerous of all sports it studied.

Penn State sophomore Kevin Dare and high schoolers Samoa Fili and Jesus Quesada died in pole vaulting accidents in the past seven weeks. In the past two decades, on average, one vaulter has died each year.

The deaths have renewed calls for change. A bill in the New York Legislature urges mandatory helmet use by high school and college vaulters, and at least one college coach has ordered his team to wear helmets.

But Koty and other athletes say that's not the solution.

"Had I been wearing a helmet, I still probably would have had a severe neck injury," she says. "Just because you get in a car and put a seat belt on, don't think you're going to be totally safe."

Vaulters argue the only helmets available are made for skateboarders or inline skaters, not for athletes who fall from the equivalent of a two-story building.

"I'm not for helmets. I wouldn't wear them," 2000 Olympic silver medalist Lawrence Johnson says. "The things that helmets bring into play can make it more dangerous. Things on your head could throw off your balance or your general awareness."

Johnson and other athletes argue proper technique is the key and that the sport is safer than ever -- if done right. The three vaulters who died this year all hit their heads on hard surfaces.

"In those cases, the helmet is not going to make much of a difference," Johnson says.

Jan Johnson, the 1972 Olympic bronze medalist, runs pole vaulting camps nationwide and leads USA Track and Field's committee on pole vault safety. One of the biggest problems in high schools, he says, is that even minimum safety standards are sometimes ignored.

"These guys are getting hurt on pits that are out of compliance. The schools are not conforming to the rules," says Jan Johnson, who runs a vault training center in Atascadero, Calif.

Pits are supposed to be no smaller than 16½ feet wide and extend 12-13 feet behind the metal box in which vaulters plant their poles. Jan Johnson wants them even bigger, at least 19 feet, 8 inches wide, and 16 feet, 5 inches deep.

More important, he says, padding should be required on the area around the landing pit and on the uprights themselves. Often the landing pads are on concrete that is not fully covered.

Jan Johnson first vaulted as a youth in his barnyard in 1963 and learned proper techniques at Bloom High School in Chicago Heights, Ill. He set a world indoor record in 1970 while attending Kansas.

"Pole vaulting pads are so much better today," he says. "I vaulted onto hay bales and straw piles when I was growing up.

"People knew how to land on their feet. Today's kids are dependent on the pit being there and they have a perception the pit is going to catch them, as opposed to the perception we had 30 years ago that we had to know how to land."

Only two states do not have high school competition in pole vault -- Iowa and Alaska.

Montwood High School in El Paso, Texas, banned pole vaulting for two years in the 1990s after a fatal accident. When the event returned, track coach Joe Vazquez bought kayaking helmets and made them mandatory.

Ed Dare, Kevin's father, has been leading the fight for helmet requirements. He points out that hockey resisted helmets for years but now accepts them.

Idaho State track coach Dave Nielsen last week ordered all his vaulters to wear helmets. He also requires his two sons to use them when they compete in high school.

"One reason is it increases the safety a little bit. The other reason is to try to create the awareness for safety. The real issue is education," he says. "This is a sport that has a great deal of height to it, and you're inverted. You put yourself in peril, so you find all the ways you can to protect yourself."

The latest death involved Fili, 17, who was killed April 1 at the Wichita East Relays in Kansas. He fell about 12 feet onto the landing mat, but his head struck the concrete.

The 19-year-old Dare died after a headfirst fall during the Big Ten indoor championships in February, and Quesada, 16, of Clewiston High School in Florida, died days earlier from a vaulting accident during practice.

The National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research, based at the University of North Carolina, says 15 fatal pole vaulting accidents occurred at U.S. high schools from 1983 to 2000. Deaths in college are much rarer, in part because skill, equipment and training are better.

In its report detailing severe injuries in high school sports ranging from football to cheerleading, the center estimated there were 25,000 high school pole vaulters and concluded, "The catastrophic injury rate for high school pole vaulters would be higher than any of the sports included in the research."

Koty, 19, is back at school after an amazing recovery. She was vaulting in her first college meet in 2001 when she crashed.

"I went off to the side. I caught my spikes on the end of the mat and hit the field-house floor," she says.

She was in an induced coma for a week, then spent nearly a month in intensive care and another three weeks in rehab. She can't remember the six weeks after the crash.

Now she's trying to rebuild her strength and endurance so she can return to the sport.

"Pole vaulting was good to me up until I fell," she says. "It's something I really like. I think one of the things that intrigues me is that a lot of people think they can't do it, and I can.

"I could say to people, 'Why do you get in a car every day?' In life, you have to do things you enjoy. You get out of bed in the morning; there are risks."