All About Pole Vault

Getting Old

“I was coaching in the Ohio Capital Conference before you were born”.  

I did NOT say that to the young assistant coach from a school across town.  He was letting me know how the Ohio Capital Conference, the “OCC”, considered the premier conference in the state, runs their track meet.  I was officiating the pole vault, and needed two workers to help put the bar up.  He was making sure I knew that it wasn’t his problem. He needed the kids he had for his “hurdle crew”.  

I didn’t tell him that I was the meet manager for OCC Championship track and cross country meets for more than a decade.  I didn’t tell him that my own track teams won four OCC Championships.  And I didn’t tell him I was in the OCC Hall of Fame.  

I must be getting old.

At least that’s what some of the coaches in the pole vault competition said.  

Championship Week

This is the first championship week of May, and over four days I will officiate eight pole vault competitions.  Each takes a few hours, and the athletes and coaches are all fired up.  For some of the kids it’s their chance to “win the Conference” and to prepare for the State qualifying meets starting next week.  And for some, it’s their last competition of the season, the last chance to clear that “goal height” they been shooting for all year.  For the coaches – it’s their chance to show how much progress they’ve made this year.  And, of course, to score points for their team, to try to win their own team OCC Championship.

That energy can be infectious, and I find myself slipping back into coaching mode.  That’s not a “good thing”: as the official I need to take a calm, passive role. No one in my forty years of coaching  ever called me calm or passive.   My place now though, is, “Here’s the rules, here’s how we are getting this event done, Good Luck”.  I want the vaulters, already hyped by the meet and their cranked-up coaches, not to be distracted by me.

So I’m not quite halfway through the eight meet blitz, and I need to do a little better with the “calm, dispassionate” official thing.  There was one competition on Wednesday, two on Thursday, two more tonight  (Friday), and the final three on Saturday.  I find that when I start to get a little tired, I start to fall back into old habits.   I’m going to be a lot more tired before this stretch is over – so here on Friday morning I’m “re-grouping” a little bit.

Fair

Officiating is all about being “fair”.  But it’s also all about being organized.  There are lots of “pieces” that fall into a good pole vault competition, and any failure of one piece can create a lot of problems.  And there’ always pressure:  pressure on the kids to perform, pressure on the coaches (some I taught to vault) to succeed.  And there’s the pressure on the “workers” to get everything right, every vault.  

But there’s also drudgery.  The “kids” (or adults) who put the bar up and place it in the right place, do it over and over and over.  A “big” competition might have over 150 attempts.  That’s 150 times of putting the bar up, and placing the sliding standards to the personal preference of the vaulter, in the hot sun, without checking a cell phone.  It’s easy to lose focus.

I might stand on the runway calling out the order and whether a vault is good or not, but it’s those workers setting the bar and standards that make the event go – or not.  They are my “team” for the meet, and our “championship” is to run a fair and efficient competition.  And if we can have a little fun along the way – that’s fine too.

I did get my two workers for the pole vault yesterday.  And we completed two good competitions.  Time to get ready for the Licking County League tonight, and more OCC tomorrow.   Looking forward to being fair and dispassionate.