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One smooch can go a long way Bob Pennell photo Talent student Max Hamilton, 6, takes a tip from a competitor and gets his sister Kasey, 4, to give his frog a good-luck kiss during a frog-jumping contest at Phoenix Elementary School Saturday. Frog jumper hopes it'll take him to Calaveras By DANI DODGE PHOENIX -- Wil Cochrane, 5, wanted to be a frog jumping champion Saturday, and he had a plan to get him there. All he had to do was talk his pretty mom into kissing the frog. That's real frog. Slimy. Cold. Warty. So Maggie (she-must-be-mother of-the-year-or-something) Cochrane took the challenge. She pressed her pink lipsticked lips up to that gelid mouth and smooched. "I figured, I've kissed enough frogs in my life," the Ashland woman reasoned. "What's one more." Saturday at Phoenix Elementary School was a wild, frog-crazy kind of day. From 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. dozens of kids lined up and paid two bucks each to pluck a frog from a barrel. Then the intrepid youths sat their frogs down and stomped the floor behind them. They wanted to make the gooey things jump like the wrath of hell was chasing them across the cafeteria floor. After three jumps, an official scorer measured the distance. Other kids with giant butterfly nets scooped up the unruly amphibians. Sometimes, though, the frog catchers weren't quick enough and the frogs hopped outside the roped off area in the school cafeteria and into the crowd. That meant screaming mothers, flying hotdogs and spilled Sprite. The entire event was for a good cause, though: fourth-grade teacher Nancy Olson will use the proceeds to buy math software for her class. Her unusual fund raiser was inspired by one of her students, Cody Shilts. At age 3, Cody was the youngest person ever to win the world-famous Calaveras County frog-jumping contest when his frog "Free Willy" jumped 19 feet and 1/2 inch. The trophy he won in 1994 was taller than he was. He got to be on "The Tonight Show." Despite his stunning youthful victory, Cody didn't have many tips for his classmates Saturday. "I gave them just the basic stuff," he said. "Like how to tickle their legs and basic stuff like that." He said it's mostly luck. "It doesn't matter about you," he explained patiently. "It matters about the frog pretty much." And because it's too cold for frogs to be coming out of hibernation in our neck of the woods, Cody's dad, Pete Shilts, actually drove down to Sacramento to find the frogs used in Saturday's fund raiser. And don't worry, he's also planning to take them back to their homes after they've gotten the requisite number of kisses from Maggie Cochrane. And that bussing did seem to give the frog Wil named Keiko an extra vigor. He leaped a whopping 16 feet 7 inches. By noon, it was still the biggest jump of the day. Wil took on the swagger of a champion. "It's because mom kissed it two times," he boasted. Right after his long jump, he even won a raffle prize: a big stuffed frog with a limited vocabulary when you pinched the fly on its foot. "Wanna go out and play?" it asks. But Wil still had his hopes set on winning the big prize of the day -- a trophy. And he kinda hoped the organizers would throw a live frog into the prize package. "I'll let him hop all over and let my mom get all mad," he said with prankish glee. "It'll get slime all over and and I'll scare her by putting in on my head." Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA