De Beque CO Senior Has Cleared 7-4.25 To Break Colorado's All-Time Record

By Mary Albl of DyeStat

Photos courtesy Melissa Rigsby

Scottie Vines is different.

Standing at 6 feet, 4 inches, the senior from De Beque, Colo. has a deep bag of contest-winning dunks. He’s never measured his vertical, but has dunked on 11-and-a-half-foot rim.

He’s also learned how to soar over seven-foot bars. He’s currently the No. 1-ranked high school jumper in the United States. He broke the Colorado all-time best March 29 when he cleared 7 feet, 4.25 inches (2.24m) at the 96th Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays. That's tied for No. 14 all-time and the highest by a prep jumper since Vernon Turner in 2017.

Two weeks later, he did it again, on April 12 to have the official record on Colorado soil. The next day, Saturday, he was crowned Prom King. 

For his all of his accolades, Vines fits in perfectly in a town of less than 500 people in western Colorado. The school in town is Preschool through 12th grade: Pre-K to sixth grade is on one side of the school; seventh through 12th grade is in the other wing.

The high school has just 32 students. Vines will graduate this spring in a class of four. 

“It’s different in a small school,” DeBeque Athletic Director and track coach Melissa Rigsby said. “I love the small school. There’s every type of kid and everybody knows each other; there’s no cliques. Everyone treats everyone the same way. (The school) definitely knows what Scott’s done, but no one is treating him any different. He’s still Scottie.”

Vines grew up with a deep passion for sports. His dad, Scottie Vines Sr., played in the NFL as a wide receiver for the Detroit Lions and was also an Alabama high school state champion in the high jump. Vines’ mom, Leslie Weis, and Rigsby’s husband, Brennan, both graduated from De Beque.

Rigsby has known Vines since he was a toddler.

He was born in Detroit, then lived in nearby Grand Junction, Colo. (about 35 miles away) until his seventh-grade year when his family moved to De Beque. Rigsby said she immediately noticed his versatile athletic abilities. 

“He came out for track his freshman year, and he really thought he was going to be a hurdler,” Rigsby said. “I mean, this kid has more athletic ability than 90 percent of the population. He could really be great at anything he wanted to do.” 

That same year De Beque seniors Wesley Ryan, the 1A state high jump champion (6-6) and Jaden Jordan, the state long jump champion (21-6.50) took Vines under their wing, noticing the freshman’s potential.  

“(Ryan) is the one who told Scottie, 'Dude, you need to be jumping. You could be an amazing jumper.' That kind of focused Scottie,” Rigsby said.

Vines’ freshman year saw him consistently jumping over 5-11. He placed fourth at the state meet (5-10). Growing into his body more and sprouting up from 5-foot-5 to 6-feet during the summer, he improved significantly his sophomore season and made 6-5 multiple times with a personal-best of 6-10, catapulting him into the top 20 in the nation.

At the state meet, though, he and everybody else endured a difficult weekend.

A normal three-hour trip to Lakewood extended to six days due to snowy conditions that forced the championships to be postponed. In less-than-ideal jumping conditions, Vines won his first state title with a height of 6-2, but it wasn’t indicative of his abilities. 

“My sophomore year jumping 6-10, I didn’t really jump very well after that,” Vines said. “I didn't handle the pressure really well as a young athlete.”

Vines connected with Matt Hemingway, who was an All-American at the University of Arkansas, and won a silver medal at the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens where he cleared 7-8. The last few years he’s helped Vines fine-tune the mechanics of the event as he’s continued to get better and better.

Hemingway, a Colorado native, also held the overall Colorado prep high jump record of 7-4 for 33 years, until Vines sailed over 7-4.25.  

“Matt’s really good at telling me and helping me just have fun with the high jump,” Vines said. “He keeps me in the right headspace.”

Rigsby said Vines came into his junior season focused on the goal to prove he was a consistently good jumper. 

“Last year he kept inching it up, inching it up, and like a bad day for him was 6-8, and he was pretty consistent at 6-10,” she said. 

Vines, who also grew a few more inches, finished the season with a PR of 7-feet and earned his second state title. 

“My husband was a 7-footer in college and not a lot of people do it at a high school level,” Rigsby said.

What’s unique about Vines and his craft is he doesn’t compete out of season. Once the track season is done, he hangs up his spikes and picks up the basketball. This past season he was named an all-state honorable mention player. Rigsby, whose oldest son, Brennan, played basketball for the University of Oregon, said she spends a majority of the winter fingers crossed that Vines stays healthy, but is supportive of his multiple endeavors. 

“I spend most of the basketball season going, ‘Oh that’s awesome, now don’t do that again,’” she said of his dunks. “He loves sports, and in basketball he’s running fast and jumping around, getting into those dunks, but it really does help; it’s still the jumping mechanism, still the building up of the right muscles.” 

Vines committed to the University of Colorado for track last fall and he came into this season with a new mindset for the high jump. He's ready to start testing his limits. 

“I think that I can be the best in the world at some point,” Vines said.

This spring he started off the season clearing 7-2, then took a week off where he traveled to Denver to compete in The Show High School Basketball All-Star Games, where he won the dunk contest. The next week, he traveled down to the 96th Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays and competed against some of the top talent in the country.

Vines said the sheer size of the meet was unlike anything he’d seen before, as well as how serious it was. 

“Where I am from, everyone else knows who I am and we all hang out and talk. These other kids at the meet were taking it really seriously and they did not want anything to do with me and did not want to talk to me,” Vines said with a slight laugh. “That's what surprised me the most, was how competitive it was. And I kind of took that as a wake up call and was like, ‘OK, if this is how we’re are going to be, alright.’”

Vines took it to heart, clearing 7-4.25 for the first time.

On April 12 at the Phil Wertman Invitation in Grand Junction, Vines cleared the height again. 

Next up for Vines, he has eyes on the national record of 7-7 set by Andra Manson of Brenham TX (2002). He’s also planning to extend his track season for the first time. With the U.S. Olympic qualifying high jump standard secured, and encouragement from Rigsby, Vines plans to go to the U.S Olympic Team Trials in June and see what he can accomplish. 

“She’s literally like a second mom, and I respect her opinion so much,” Vines said. “I’m so thankful she made me do track. I might go out and I might not jump very well (at the Trials) but I look at it as just experience, and it gives me a head start because that's the goal. I want to be an Olympian.”

Regardless of how different the rest of the spring turns out for Vines, he’s still the small-town kid from De Beque.  

“One thing about a small town, it definitely keeps you humble,” Vines said. “And you know, there’s a lot of people that want to come up and talk to me, and I don’t really know if they are genuine. But I know that everyone in De Beque that comes to talk to me, knew before and wanted stuff to do with me then. Everyone is like a big family here in De Beque.”