Hansen: UA's Tonnesen contender for NCAA decathlon title

He won the Pac-12 decathlon championship two weeks ago, which often is accompanied by a headline that includes something about the Olympic Games and America’s best athlete.

If it keeps going this way, you’ll know it is P-a-u (no L) without spellcheck.

It’s not that this is some sort of shock, or that Arizona doesn’t have a history of world-class decathletes.

As recently as 2007, Arizona’s Jake Arnold won back-to-back NCAA decathlon championships, carrying the torch for a string of All-Americans that includes national champs Klaus Ambrosch and Derek Huff.

What makes the Tonnesen-emerges-as-decathlete-star so compelling is that he grew up literally 2 miles from Arizona State, graduated from Tempe Prep Academy, and that his parents own a property-management business in Tempe.

And that he gave the Sun Devils the first shot.

“Pau fell in my lap,” says UA jumps coach Sheldon Blockburger. “It was dumb luck.”

No team in college track and field can tell a better story about its decathlon champions than Arizona can.

Huff, who won the 1989 national title, began his career at faraway Western Illinois University.

Ambrosch, who won the 1998 national title, grew up in Austria and arrived in Tucson on the basis of a phone call and a letter.

Arnold, who won the 2006 and 2007 titles, was a non-scholarship walk-on from Santa Rosa, California.

Tonnesen won the Class 1A state pole vault championship at Tempe Prep, but enrolled at Mesa Community College and began to blossom under MCC coach Steve Jacobs. Remember him? Jacobs had been a two-time All-American decathlete at Arizona in 1978-80, and, until Huff came along a decade later, the school’s best-ever.

Although Jacobs had served time on the Sun Devil staff, he kept his UA ties alive by bringing the MCC track team to Drachman Stadium every December for UA coach Fred Harvey’s annual Red and Blue intrasquad meet.

“My coaches told (Blockburger) about me,” says Tonnesen. “I didn’t have any great marks at the time, but after he watched me that day, he started to recruit me.”

Blockburger, who coached Arnold and was a world-class decathlete in his competitive days, had since become known more for his world-class high-jumpers, Arizona NCAA champions Liz Patterson, Brigetta Barrett and Nick Ross.

The more he evaluated Tonnesen, the more he couldn’t believe he had essentially stumbled upon a future Pac-12 decathlon champion. By the time Tonnesen won the 2012 and 2013 NJCAA national championships at Mesa, schools like TCU and ASU became involved.

“When I saw Pau at our Red and Blue meet, I said ‘OK, we need to get this guy,’” says Blockburger. “Normally, I don’t recruit JC kids, but this was different. ASU wanted him bad, but according to his dad, their final meeting with the ASU coaches didn’t go well. He called me and said, ‘We’re coming to Arizona.’”

Tonnesen scored a career-high 7,823 points at the Pac-12 championships, upsetting three-time defending champion Dakotah Keys of Oregon. When you score 7,823 points in the decathlon, it’s like a baseball pitcher hitting 95 mph on the radar guns.

People start paying attention.

At Arizona, only Arnold, who scored a career-best 8,215, and Huff, whose top score was 8,075, have bettered Tonnesen’s 7,823.

“Since we got him, Pau has gotten better in every event,” says Blockburger. “He set a personal record in every event except the high jump this year. He’s just getting started.”

Blockburger laughs at the irony. After coaching Barrett to a high-jump silver medal at the 2012 London Olympics, his biggest struggle with Tonnesen has been the high jump.

“Maybe we’ll have to find Pau a new coach,” he says.

At the NCAA championships next week at Oregon’s Hayward Field, Tonnesen will face the most imposing field of his young decathlete life. Georgia’s Maicel Uibo and Garrett Scantling both have scored in excess of 8,200 this year. And Oregon’s Keys will have the support of a boisterous crowd of about 15,000 Duck fans.

“It’s going to take at least 8,000 to win,” says Tonnesen.

Says Blockburger: “It might take 8,200. Pau won’t be favored, but I’ve seen bigger upsets; Jake was supposed to get fifth the first year he won it all (in 2006).”

The end goal for Tonnesen is to qualify for and be in China for August’s 2015 World Championships. Because his mother, Pilar, was born in Spain, he has dual citizenship. If he can score 8,075 in Eugene, he will almost surely be wearing Spanish colors in China.

Better yet, Tonnesen has one more season at Arizona before the 2016 Rio Olympics. Blockburger believes the 6-foot 4-inch Tonnesen can be an 18½- foot pole-vaulter, improve his long jump close to 25 feet and consistently high jump 7 feet.

“When you get a guy like this,” he says, “you just hope you don’t screw it up.”