Tristan Schultheis clears the bar during the Astronaut Invitational Track and Field meet in Titusville.
Astronaut High kicker Tristan Schultheis was named to the first-team Class 4A all-state football team.
When Tristan Schultheis first contemplated the high jump as a possible event for himself, he had trouble imagining his dad’s best mark of 6 feet, 6 inches.
“I was looking at stats and thinking, ‘6-6, wow, that’s crazy.’ My first meet, I jumped 6-8, so anything is possible.”
Tristan Schultheis clears the bar during the Astronaut Invitational Track and Field meet in Titusville.
You could say that. His 6-8 starter jump was just a bit more than a year ago. He’s since reached heights that make 6-8 seem more pedestrian than it truly is for a high school jumper.
Schultheis was a junior at Astronaut High when he agreed to add high jumping to his repertoire of pole vaulting and hurdling. Months later, he was the Class 2A state champion.
That 6-8 best was still his best. Schultheis hadn’t improved on the mark and, in fact, had seen his heights drop a bit until he got to the ultimate competition for a Florida high school athlete.
Anxiety, yes, but nothing Schultheis couldn’t handle.
“I’ve had practice with that,” he said.
Schultheis has had practice with a lot of things. As a 5-foot-8 ninth-grader, he went out for football and soccer. In his eight years of playing football, he has been a quarterback and a variety of other positions. He had hoped to skip the sport as a senior after serving as the team’s kicker in 2014.
“I’ve done it for so long,” he said. “There’s a point where it just gets old.”
But Schultheis had gotten good, and his success had created value, leading teammates to ask him to return.
“I just sucked it up for the last year.”
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He was named an all-state and All-Space Coast punter, but some of his best moments came in putting points on the board. He connected on a 47-yard field goal against rival Titusville, and his extra point with no time on the clock beat Orlando Jones.
Since his physical height jumped to 6-0 in 10th grade, he’s been asked to play basketball. Simultaneously, he is an older brother who takes care of a younger sister when his dad is working out of town or his mom is working weekends.
“If they’re not here, I’m the parent for the day,” he said, explaining why that contributed to his attempted departure from football. “I really just didn’t have time for a lot of stuff. Football practices til 6 or 6:30, and 6:30 is dark when football practice is going on.”
Yet, kicking extra points and field goals in front of anxious crowds with winning on the line has paid dividends when dealing with any anxiety he has experienced as his jumping heights have climbed. He participated in AAU track and field last summer and increased his best to 6-10.
Then he hit a roadblock, unable to kick his feet high enough to get past that point.
Now almost 6-3, Schultheis has done what no Brevard County jumper has done, clearing 7-2. He did it at the Astronaut Invitational on March 18 for the first time and has done it since.
After that jump, the guy who had been recruited by USF, UNF and FIT got calls from schools including Miami and Ohio State. On Friday, he signed with the Hurricanes.
The state record of 7-2 3/4 was set by Sam Hill of New Smyrna Beach in 2002. The best high school jump in the nation this year was 7-3 by Noah Martin of Washington state. Schultheis has a few opportunities to replace those names with his own. Astronaut and the rest of the 2A schools from Brevard will compete at Fort Lauderdale Pine Crest on Thursday in the Region 4 meet. The top four in each event will advance from there to the state finals in Bradenton on May 6.
Astronaut High’s #9 Tristan Schultheis kicks an extra point.
To this point, he’s worked only with War Eagles track and field coach Tom Bundy while also balancing his obligations with school work and family.
His rare moments alone come mostly on the lake by his grandmother’s house, where he puts his 13-foot boat into the water to fish, sometimes with friends, sometimes not. Mostly for bass.
“Everything is just fast-paced,” he said. “Once I get out there, I can kind of relax.”
As for what he might be able to do once other sports and other track and field events are in his past and he has just college classes and high jumping demanding his time, yes, he has thought about what might be possible.
As he has heard athletes from competing schools point to “that guy who jumped 7-2,” his own standards have increased.
“Any time I jump anything less than my (personal record), I’m kind of upset,” he said. “I just have the drive to do better.”
He’s been high jumping less than two years. It has not become old. He has not found the limit of his upward potential.
“I know I can jump 7-4.”
Contact McCallum at 321-242-3698 or bmccallum@floridatoday.com. Follow @Brian_McCallum and facebook.com/FLtoday.brianmccallum.
