A Pole Vault Story

Victoria Harvey clears 13′ to win the State Championship

This is another in the Sunday Story series. No politics today – just a story of a pole vaulter.

Old Coach

If you’ve read any of the “Sunday Stories” on Our America, you know that I was a high school track and cross country coach for forty years at Watkins Memorial High School.  I retired from coaching after the 2017 season; it’s been a full six track seasons since.  In high school terms, that means there aren’t any kids who remember me as a coach; even the youngest middle schoolers never saw me in action.

Over forty years we had many “great” teams, both great to coach, and great in their successes.  We earned Conference, District and Regional championships, and even had a couple of chances to “win it all” at the State Meet.  For a variety of reasons, that wasn’t to be, but we did have the best distance runner in Ohio in 2016.  Andrew Jordan won individual state championships in cross country and in the indoor and outdoor 3200 meter races, establishing state records in each.  And we had several other athletes who were so close to being the best in the state they could “taste it”, only to have the championship slip away.  We saved their pictures on the podium, wearing the proud “Ohio” medal, but with a sad expression on their face.

I coached every event at one time or another, but my state “reputation” was in the pole vault.  I got involved in the Coaches Association Pole Vault Safety program in 1990, and over the years became the “face of Safety” statewide.  As a coach, I had ten All-Ohio (medalists at state) vaulters.  Twice in those years we had the “shot” to win – and both times we came up short in the tie-breaking procedure. 

New Official

Two years after I retired, I became a “full-time” track and field official (I had a license for years), and based on my pole vault safety experience, quickly moved “up” in my select group, pole vault officials.  In 2022 I was given the honor of working the State meet (I wrote an essay about that last year).  I was back there last week for a second time.  

This year the pole vault crew was divided, with four officials for the boy’s competitions and four different ones for the girls.  I was on the girls crew, and we had three tremendous competitions in the two-day meet.  But the drama, at least for me, was all in the third one, the Division I (big schools) competition that was our last event of the meet. Here’s that story.

Watkins’ Best

This drama happened in three ways.  First, it was a narrowly matched competition, with all of the competitors within a 12” of each other in the qualifying.  There was only one athlete who was literally “heads above” the rest, the returning state runner-up, Victoria.  And she came from Watkins where I coached for so many years, so many, in fact, that I coached her father in the pole vault and had her mother in school.  Victoria is a dedicated vaulter from a family willing to sacrifice for “pole vault”.  For years she trained privately at the  “Buckeye Pole Vault Academy”, tutored by Austin Hicks, the coach there and a former vaulter himself.  

Watkins has a wonderful pole vault coach now, Rob Hammond.  Rob was the head coach at a neighboring school when I was coaching, but since retired.  He came back to be an assistant coach at Watkins, and does a great job of balancing all of the factors in Victoria’s vaulting, and the rest of his charges as well.  Rob brings experience in vault and decades of head coaching to the “runway” when he coaches his athletes.  

In the Heat

Second there were the “warmup” conditions.  The competition started at three in the afternoon in surprising early-summer ninety degree heat.  While there was a tent to shade the competitors, the heat was oppressive; for them, their coaches, and the officials as well.  Most of the eighteen competitors knew each other already, with several training together at the Academy in the off-season.  And almost all of them were in meets together throughout the state, actually seeking out the toughest competition to prepare them for this runway, on this day, at this meet.

And then, as the competition began, there was the long sequence of opening heights.  With such a compacted field, almost every vaulter was jumping at the earliest heights, so that the early rounds took a long time.  And just as we reached the critical stage, the height that was “the best” for many and all vaulters were jumping; there was an announcement from the press box.  While the skies were clear-blue, lightning detectors showed strikes within a ten mile limit.  The meet was postponed, first for thirty minutes, and then for each new strike close by, thirty more and then more again.

The Long Wait

The storm arrived, with a lot of rain.  Water is anathema for vaulters.  Wet poles make it hard to hang on, wet hands do the same, and wet surfaces make it more difficult to get traction, even with spiked shoes.  Even when the lightning moved off, the rain continued, so while the meet started up again, the pole vault remained delayed.

Finally it cleared up, and the valiant Ohio State groundskeeping crew got things dry.  The vaulters started a brief warmup period.  But as they lined up, a new storm popped up, this time with hail as well as rain.  We were delayed again.  We waited, and finally got another break in the weather. The groundskeepers did their work, and we were ready to restart again.  The pole vault competition that started at three (and would have concluded by six) finally got going again around eight. 

Victoria hadn’t even had a chance to vault her opening height, now it was five hours after we started.  As a former coach,  I remember hours spent in buses and locker rooms, telling jokes and stories, trying to pass the time and keep athletes “loose” and ready to go when their chance came around.  But five hours is a really long time to be “ready”.  

When we finally started up again, Victoria was the third vaulter “up”.  

Three Attempts

In pole vault, each athlete gets three attempts to clear the bar at a given height.  Once they clear, they then have a fresh three attempts at the next higher height.  Famously, United States vaulter Katie Nageotte from Olmsted Falls, Ohio, went onto win the Tokyo Olympic Gold Medal after taking three attempts at her starting height (14’7”), more than a foot below her eventual gold medal winning height.  Had she missed that third attempt, her day would be over.

Victoria faced the same situation at her Regional meet to qualify to state, where she took three attempts at her starting height of 11’8”, before going on to win at 12’9”.  

It was hot.  Then it rained.  Then it hailed.  The runway was wet.  The wind (another huge factor) shifted from behind the vaulters to across the runway.  And there were hours to think about it, hours to get nervous, hours to listen to all of the talk, and worry about the opening 11’6”.

Smoking the Bar

When I called Victoria’s name up, she asked me to move an official farther back from the runway.  That made me nervous, if she was thinking about that, was she already distracted.  I asked my fellow official to move back (she did, with a raised eyebrow).  The clock started, Victoria had one minute to make her first attempt.  She took a breath, focused, came down the runway and launched.

In pole vault when you go so far over the bar it looks easy, it’s called “smoking the bar”.  And that’s what Victoria did.  At 12’0”, there were still fourteen vaulters competing.  It took a while to get back to Victoria, listed at the end of the sheet.  But when she finally got her chance, she smoked 12’0” on her first attempt as well.  Then there were six left in competition, the state medalists.

The bar moved to 12’4”, and the competition went much faster.  Every vaulter missed on the first round until the last vaulter on the list, Victoria.  She smoked 12’4” as well.  And then she sat back, as the rest of the field failed at the height.  She was the State Champion.

The Champ

The winner “owns” the bar.  She can set it at any height she wants.  Victoria went to 13’0” and smoked that.  Then she smoked  13’3”, two inches higher than she ever vaulted before.  Finally she had the bar set to the state Division 1 record, 13’ 7 ½”.  It was only then that she faltered and went out on three attempts.  But her 13’3” was a new Watkins school record and her personal best.  She was the State Champion, the FIRST Watkins Pole Vaulter to achieve it.  It was enough.

Officials aren’t supposed to show favor.  I did my best to stay “under control”:  no jumping up and down, no cheering; just polite applause, along with my fellow officials.  It wasn’t easy.  I didn’t coach Victoria, all I did was mark the “X’s and O’s”, the makes and misses.  But I am as proud as if I had.  Now Watkins has a state champion, the first in “our” event for the past forty years.  It’s Victoria’s win, Rob’s win, Austin’s win, her parents’ win.  

And, just a little bit, it’s my win too.

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22
• Origin Stories – 5/22/22
• Origin Stories – Part Two 5/29/22
• Back at State – 6/5/22
• Out in the Country – 6/19/22
• Pataskala Downs – 7/4/22
• Car Stories I – 7/24/22
• Car Stories II  – 7/31/22
• Old Man Experience – 8/7/22
• Cross Country Camp – 8/14/22
• New to the Pack – 8/21/22
• Car Stories III – The Bus – 8/28/22
• A Day in the Life – 9/4/22
• Stupid Human Tricks – 9/18/22
• Fair of Foul – 2/26/23
• Immigrant Story – 3/12/23
• Busy Season – 5/15/23
• Of Jeeps and Bucks – 5/28/23
• A Pole Vault Story  -6/11/23