Life -- a simple thing that vanishes too fast, especially for those who seem to love it most.

That's what happened to Kevin Dare.

Strong and young, the Penn State pole vaulter charged down a runway in Minneapolis two years ago, head full of Olympic dreams.

Those he loved said he was like the mythical ideal student athlete from a bygone era, and when he planted his pole in the vault box at the 2002 Big Ten indoor track championships, he was rising.

But somewhere, something went wrong, and Kevin Dare fell back to earth.

Dead at 19. The doctors said he died instantly.

And so those left behind could only ask, why Kevin? Why one of the ones who loved life and was sure to miss it the most?

It was a very long plane ride home for Ed Dare, Kevin's father. He had watched his youngest son, his best friend, killed when his head struck the exposed steel launch box.

All he could say to himself, over and over again, was "it was supposed to be track and field; it was supposed to be a fun day."

Then came the phone call.

He had just walked into the house when a woman from Florida called, saying her 16-year-old son had died two weeks before in a similar accident. That's the first time Ed Dare stopped.

"I just said, 'Wait a minute, two kids just died here,' " Ed Dare said.

He was grieving, of course, with his wife and remaining son Eric -- the Penn State junior who threw javelin and played football -- figuring out how they would manage without the one who would always crack a joke.

But the thought was already rolling around in his head that something had to change.

This was only a sport after all, not something to die for. But so many competitors had died -- nine over a five-year period -- so why hadn't someone already fixed the sport of pole vaulting?

Ed Dare wasn't the only one think-

ing these things. His inbox was being flooded with e-mail messages from around the country, messages from Sweden. People he had never met sent their sympathy, asking if there was anything they could do to help. He saved every one.

That's when Ed Dare resolved that the sport of pole vaulting had to be fixed, not abolished, because that's what Kevin would have wanted. It wasn't long before he was on the phone with Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley, who was having thoughts of reform himself.

Now, two years later, they believe they have laid the foundation, both through rules changes and technological innovation, for making the sport safer -- work they say will continue for as long as necessary.

Bill Farrell was scanning his Penn State alumni newswire one night when he read that a Penn State pole vaulter had been killed in competition. He e-mailed his condolences to the Dare family and mentioned he works for a company that makes padding.

The company was Skydex, and Farrell was one of the first people Dare and Curley contacted about ways to make the sport safer. During their discussions, the question that kept coming up was why, in this day and age, are athletes still using vault boxes made of steel and concrete?

Farrell, a 1959 graduate, told them about the Skydex padding his company had developed. It is the same type of padding used in the Schutt DNA football helmet, introduced last year. The Navy SEALS use Skydex to line the decks of their boats.

The engineers at Skydex believed they could create a vault box out of the shock-absorbent plastic. They began working with 1972 Olympic bronze medalist pole vaulter Jan Johnson, testing prototypes for what would eventually become the 506 Skydex Soft Vault Box.

This vault box contains two layers of Skydex padding layered on top of each other to create 5.5 inches of cushioning. While there is a small steel base that acts as backing where the pole is actually planted, none of this steel is exposed.

There is a world of difference between the two boxes.

The National Transportation Safety Board and the Commission for Product Safety (CPS) use a rating called G-max to measure the force of impact upon the body. The CPS has set a standard that G-max should not exceed 200 for any impact.

For a fall from six inches, a steel and concrete launch box received a score of 500 by Skydex's testing. By comparison, the Soft Box received a 163 G-max score for a fall from 20 feet.

While there is still a question as to how successful the Soft Box will be at preventing injuries on the most severe falls, Farrell said it will go a long way in stopping the most common pole vaulting injuries, in which athletes fall short distances onto the vault box. He added there has been a large amount of interest in the new innovation, with it already being installed in several private clubs, including Johnson's.

Recently, Penn State had a Soft Box installed at the Multisport Indoor Facility. While still not used in competition because it is awaiting International Track and Field Association certification (which is expected before next season), the box has been used at practice to great success.

"We've done well with it," said women's track and field coach Beth Alford-Sullivan. "We've found no significant impact or difference."

While the Soft Box appears to be a major safety advancement, the vault box itself is only about 71 square inches. So Dare and Curley wondered about all the other areas where a vault can go wrong, such as when a vaulter hits the uprights or bounces off a mat and lands on his or her head. What about all those potential injuries?

The most obvious answer was helmets, which have been debated in track and field circles for a long time. Some coaches favored them in theory, although one was never designed specifically for pole vaulting, so someone wanting to wear a helmet would have to make do with an ill-fitting bicycle or hockey helmet.

Others complained that helmets restricted vision, threw vaulters off balance and caused disorientation mid-air, making the sport actually more dangerous. And because helmets added weight, they also had a negative effect on performance.

Dare and Curley both said they believe helmets to be logical safety measures, and so they asked, what if someone could develop a helmet designed specially for pole vaulting, one that athletes felt comfortable wearing and had minimal effects on performance?

About the same time they replied to Farrell's e-mail message, Dare and Curley contacted Enventys, a leading helmet design company, about the possibility of a pole vaulting helmet.

Enventys went through several prototype designs over two years, with Penn State vaulters being consulted on what looked and felt right. Penn State's College of Health and Human Development also carried out a large portion of the impact testing.

While the helmet design has yet to be finalized, Ian Kovacevich, Enventys vice president for engineering, said they believe they have a workable product that will be ready for sale by later summer.

Like the Soft Box, helmets cannot prevent all injuries, due to the nature of the sport. Still, its makers, along with Dare and Curley, said the helmets will go a long way to making pole vaulting safer.

"This helmet will protect against a good number of injuries which are the most common in the sport," Kovacevich said.

With a helmet set to hit the market in the near future, the question now becomes: Will anyone wear them? And, equally important, will any governing body demand them?

Greg Metcalf, track and field coach at University of Washington, which has won the last two Pac-10 men's pole vaulting champions, said while he would not discourage an athlete who wanted to wear a helmet, he does not think they will have that great an impact.

"I've had this conversation with a lot of pole vaulting coaches and there are a lot of instances that occur in pole vaulting where a helmet isn't going to help," Metcalf said. "If you fall from 18 feet, a helmet isn't going to help."

However, helmets do have some supporters.

Dick Booth, assistant track coach in charge of pole vaulting at the University of Arkansas, a track and field powerhouse, likes the idea of pole vaulting-specific helmets and said he does not think they would have a negative impact on performance.

"I'm in favor of keeping the event in the sport, and obviously we need to have more protection," Booth said.

However, he said he does not want to see helmets become required gear at the collegiate level.

Instead, he said the solution is to have athletes wear helmets when they first begin pole vaulting, at the middle and high school levels.

"I just think the way to do it is to get kids started at a young level so they get used to it," Booth said.

Dare and Curley are both in favor of making helmets compulsory at some point, for the simple reason that a requirement would end any performance arguments since the playing field would be level. Curley said the change he envisions would be like the one that occurred in ice hockey.

"If you look back on when they put ice hockey helmets on, there was a lot of the same resistance," Curley said. "To go out there without a helmet now would be unfathomable."

When Dare and Curley first started reading e-mail messages and taking calls and setting appointments with all these people who had all these ideas about fixing pole vaulting, they were amazed at the innovative efforts people were proposing.

But these new inventions were all off in the distance. For example, getting the helmet from the idea stage to store shelves in two years is a minor miracle.

So they asked, what could be done now to prevent athletes from needlessly being injured and killed because we have yet to build a better vault box? And isn't there some way we can improve the way pole vaulting is taught and events are staged?

In May 2002, Penn State hosted a conference on pole vaulting safety, inviting people from across the track and field community to discuss how to better the sport.

There were two main results from that conference.

First, the NCAA changed its rules, requiring the landing pad to be expanded from 16 feet by 12 feet to 19 feet-8 inches by 16 feet-5 inches. Furthermore, the NCAA mandated a padded box collar surround the vault box to cut down on the amount of exposed steel.

Beyond the new NCAA regulations, Penn State proposed 10 resolutions, which the Big Ten adopted for competition among its member institutions for the 2003 season. Among the initiatives, coaches and vaulters must now annually attend a safety clinic conducted by the Big Ten, and rules officials must now inspect the pole vault venue before an event.

The Big Ten now also requires member institutions to hold annual pole vaulting clinics for junior high and high school coaches.

In the long run, these clinics for high school coaches might have the biggest impact on the sport. It is at the lower levels where most injuries occur, because vaulters are often uneducated about proper technique and the sport's finer nuances, such as pole flex.

If the sport becomes safer at the lower levels, Dare and Curley argue, pole vaulting will benefit not only because there will be fewer injuries to younger athletes, but also because athletes will arrive at the collegiate level -- where they take on greater risk by reaching greater heights -- better prepared to safely challenge old records.

Monday marked the two-year anniversary of Kevin Dare's death. This weekend, the Penn State men's indoor track and field team travels to Michigan for the Big Ten championships.

For his father and the rest of the family, the pain is still there. And this crusade, for all the good it has done, does not change the facts.

"It doesn't do anything to relieve the pain of knowing we'll never see Kevin again," Ed Dare said, "but I like the idea of knowing no one else ever has to go through this."

And though Kevin, who still has the fifth-highest vault in Penn State history, might be dead, his father wants his son to have a better legacy than "the guy who died pole vaulting."

He wants the legacy of his son, the one who loved life, to be something that allows others to do the same.

So in the days and weeks following Kevin's death, Dare used the money that came with all those sympathy cards to establish the Kevin Dare Pole Vaulting Memorial Scholarship.

Every year, Dare and Penn State hold a benefit concert for the scholarship fund.

But Dare wants more.

He is afraid that all these technological innovations could make pole vaulting too expensive for many institutions, particularly at the lower levels. That's why, once the scholarship has been fully endowed, he intends to start a foundation, independent of Penn State because of NCAA rules, to help athletes love the sport of pole vaulting safely.

"I'm also realistic enough to know there are going to be school systems, particularly in the inner city, that won't be able to afford this stuff," Dare said. "So the hope is, long term, to set up a foundation so we'll come in and subsidize it. We'll buy you a soft box or five or six helmets."

One thing is clear: Ed Dare is helping the sport of pole vaulting grow.

And if to live is to grow, then maybe Kevin Dare -- the one who loved life so much -- lives on, too.