As a younger athlete, Chris St. Helen tried his luck at basketball, football and long-distance running, and he was average.

Then he discovered the pole vault and he was average no more.

From then on, it has been up, up and away.

The Highland Springs High School junior with Caribbean-born parents has taken off, literally, into the wild blue yonder as the springiest Springer of all time.

“There’s a spark about the kid,” says Highland Springs High vault Coach Kyle Bishop. “He’s a ball of fire.”

The 5-foot-8, 140-pound St. Helen, who turns 17 in August, cleared a personal best 15-4 in winning the Division 5, South Region title last month.

Competing in wet, windy conditions last Saturday at the State 6A Track and Field Championships in Newport News, St. Helen cleared 14 to finish second to Mark Miller of Hickory High School in Chesapeake. Miller’s winning height was 14-6.

St. Helen won both the indoor and outdoor 6A State titles as a sophomore.

Steadily, he has pushed the crossbar bar higher and higher — from a best of 12-6 as a freshman, to 14-6 last year, obliterating the school record. He’s now at 15-plus.

His goal?

“I want to clear 17 feet before I’m finished” high school, he said confidently.

And after high school?

“I want to continue vaulting at one of the service academies — either Navy or the Air Force,” he said.

St. Helen flies high in the classroom, too, with a 3.85 overall GPA in all college-bound courses.

His background can be read with a calypso beat.

He is son of Neil and Tricia St. Helen, who both came to Richmond with their families from the Caribbean. His father, a truck driver and mechanic, hails from the Virgin Islands.

Chris has inherited his dad’s mechanical aptitude.

“I love working on cars — and driving them,” he said, referring to his smooth ride, a glistening 1997 Pontiac Grand Prix GT with “Got PV?” bumper sticker.

His mother, who works at UPS, hails from Trinidad & Tobago.

Growing up in Eastern Henrico County, Chris signed up for basketball and football.

“I was just average,” he recalled.

He began running long distances in eighth grade on Fairfield Middle School’s track team, but found the activity more perspiring than inspiring.

“It didn’t look like I would go far and, worse, it wasn’t any fun,” he said. “I began watching the vaulters. It was eye catching.”

That’s when Coach Bishop, who is one of the state’s vaulting gurus, came into sharp focus.

With great success, Coach Bishop has coached a large chuck of the area’s elite vaulters for some 30 years. The mentoring began in Coach Bishop’s backyard in Mechanicsville. Now his Aim High Vault Club has a home with a roof at Aerial East Gymnastics off Pole Green Road in Hanover County.

St. Helen trains alongside some of Virginia’s top vaulters, including Griffin Kowalt from New Kent, who has sailed 15-7 in Division 3A.

St. Helen’s Highland Springs High and Aim High teammates include Springer Patrick Booker, who cleared 13 feet at the South Region meet.

Previously, Coach Bishop’s clients tended to hail from Lee-Davis and Atlee High schools.

He says he changed, purposely, “to give back, to help out with some of the inner- city athletes.”

Highland Springs isn’t inner city, but St. Helen and Booker stand out as young African-Americans in an event that is predominantly white and suburban.

“That’s right, there aren’t many black vaulters,” Coach Bishop conceded.

With that, he added:

“But probably the three most successful vaulters in Virginia history were all black.”

Topping Coach Bishop’s list of vaulters of color is Lawrence Johnson of Great Bridge High School in Chesapeake, who went on to win four NCAA titles at the University of Tennessee and then a silver medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics.

Then there was Brian Hunter, also of Great Bridge High, who went on to win the 2002 NCAA crown at the University of Texas.

Closer to home, Kevin Brown of Henrico High School was a state champion in Virginia and went on to star at the University of North Carolina before competing on the pro circuit with 18-4 best.

Vaulters tend to be over 6 feet tall, but St. Helen takes heart in the fact that the world record holder, Frenchman Renaud Lavillenie, is just 5-foot-10 and 152 pounds.

“It is an advantage to be taller,” said St. Helen. “But if you don’t have that advantage, you make the most of what you do have.”

Coach Bishop praises St. Helen for his intelligence, explosive speed, strength relative to his slender frame and rubbery joints.

In fact, despite no formal training, St. Helen has been hired at Aerial East to help train gymnasts in the 4 to 15 age groups.

There’s more to being a vaulter than can be determined from physical stature. Sometimes you need to look into their head. To flip upside down, so far into the air, isn’t for the timid. To succeed on a top level, the fear factor must be minimized.

“I never had any fear factor,” insists St. Helen. “Sure, I’ve had some tough falls. But it’s the falls, I think, that help you eliminate the fear factor.”

Coach Bishop noted Lavillenie, the 2012 Olympic champ in London at 19-7, was a “circus acrobat” before becoming a vaulter.

Virginia’s all-divisions state record for the vault is held by another Great Bridge High athlete, Mike Morrison, who sailed 17-6 1/2 in 2005.

Out of Richmond, former Jefferson-Huguenot-Wythe High School standout Keith Young won two state titles and posted a 15-0 best in 1983.

Nowadays, only a few high schools — none in Richmond — place much concentration on the vault largely because of a lack of facilities and coaching, and the danger.

Coach Bishop’s former pupils include Chris Pillow, an Atlee High School graduate, who soared to 16-3 to win the State AAA title in 2011. He later vaulted at Rice University.

Last year, Coach Bishop took a group of vaulters, including St. Helen, to the National Pole Vault Summit in Reno, Nev.

Coming up June 17 to 19 is the New Balance Nationals competition in Greensboro, N.C.

To soar to vaulting’s upper tier, an athlete needs speed, strength, flexibility, mental toughness and opportunity.

St. Helen is way above average in all.