La Cañada couple, senior athletes keep on top of their game
Anyone who’s recently attended a St. Francis High School track and field meet has likely seen La Cañada husband and wife Bert and Kathy Bergen hard at work overseeing the high-jump event.
There to set up the staging area and record individual athletes’ performances, providing words of advice or encouragement as needed, the volunteer officials will tell you up front they lack the full credentials of high-jump coaches.
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But a high school student with ambitions in the sport would be wise to listen to what they have to say — between them, the Bergens have amassed more than four decades of experience in the high jump and other track and field events and have set and broken national and world records competing in U.S.A. Masters Track and Field championships since 1994.
Lifelong sports enthusiasts, the Bergens kept their competitive prowess confined mostly to the tennis court until they saw an article about Pasadena’s Senior Games, an Olympic-styled event for athletes 50 and over.
Bert Bergen watches one of the jumpers he works with on the St. Francis high jump team get over the bar at a St. Francis track meet on Thursday, April 21, 2016.
“I said to Kathy, ‘Why don’t we go?’” Bert Bergen recalled in a recent interview. “I kidded her, saying ‘You could run — anyone could run.’”
And so, then at the respective ages of 54 and 56, Kathy and Bert Bergen competed in the 1994 Pasadena Senior Games. He participated in the long jump and the high jump, an event in which he’d excelled in high school, while she competed in the 50- and 100-meter running events.
The pair did pretty well and within a couple of years, with a win or two under their belts, they came to enjoy the thrill of competition and the natural good sportsmanship that exists among high jumpers, in particular.
Our attitude is we’re going to keep doing this as long as we can do it.
— Bert Bergen
“The best thing about high-jumping is the camaraderie,” said Bert Bergen, who jumps in the traditional “straddle” position, now a rarity. “When you do any running event, you don’t really linger with the people you’re competing with. With the high jump you get talking to people and everyone gets to talk with everyone else.”
“High jumpers just seem to have a comfortable, friendly rapport,” agreed Kathy Bergen, who jumps the contemporary, face up “Fosbury Flop,” named for Olympian Dick Fosbury.
Participating in numerous U.S.A. Track and Field Masters competitions, the Bergens (Bert is 78 and Kathy 76) have won and placed both nationally and internationally. Last August, they traveled to Lyon, France, for the World Masters Athletics Indoor Championships alongside 8,000 other athletes from across the globe.
There, Kathy Bergen won the 100-meter sprint, placed second in the high jump and set a world record in the 200-meter sprint for women in the 75-to-79 age group. An article by Bridget Cushen, put out by the organization in November, lauded the achievement: Kathy Bergen, USA, wrote herself into the history books as she came storming through to take the W75 world title in a new world record time of 33.79 seconds.
Kathy and Bert Bergen at a St. Francis track meet at St. Francis High School on Thursday, April 21, 2016.
“I love the competition. I feel all my competitive juices come out when I’m in sprints, and no place else,” said Kathy Bergen, who’s trained with a professional coach for the past seven years. “When I’m in the blocks, I’m not there to make any friends.”
Son Scott Bergen, the youngest of the couple’s five children, said he and his siblings all participated in athletics, have coached school sports teams and still do, thanks in no small part to their parents’ enthusiasm.
“I don’t know if it was an official rule, but it was just sort of understood that we had to be in sports. We all kind of did everything, whatever was in season,” he said. “Their being sports fans and athletes was a huge influence on us.”
Himself a former St. Francis student, English teacher and cross country/track and field coach, Scott Bergen said his parents’ joining in the Senior Games, as casual as it was, marked the beginning of something exciting for them both.
“It was just a serendipitous thing, and now it’s this major chapter in their lives,” he said, adding of this mother, “The book of Kathy Bergen in 50 years is going to start with this part.”
The Bergens admit their passion for coaching and competing with others has given them a new outlook on life.
“The exciting thing for us is when you age up, because then you’re the new kids,” said Bert Bergen, who moves up to the 80-to-84 age group next year. “Our attitude is we’re going to keep doing this as long as we can do it.”
“I age up in three years, and I can’t wait,” Kathy Bergen said, adding with a smile, “I’ll break all the records when I’m 80.”
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Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com
Twitter: @SaraCardine
