Provenance

Provenance – the place of origin or earliest known history of something (OED)

It’s an actual Sunday, and this is another in the “Sunday Story” series. It was originally published on the Ohio Pole Vault Safety website.

This is a (long) pole vaulting story, a brief history of a piece of equipment, and what’s happened to the event in the past thirty-five years (or more) here in Central Ohio.  

I sold the raised runway today. 

Indoor Vaulting

What is a raised runway?  Mine was a series of wooden platforms, 48” long by 10” high by 36” wide, that hook together to make a 100’ raised runway for pole vaulting.  It’s heavy, 25 sections of wood each near 100 lbs.  That’s more than a ton, set up and torn down every time we wanted to vault.  But, back in the day, it gave my Watkins vaulters a competitive advantage.  We could vault, indoors, on the gym floor, in the middle of winter; something that only vaulters with access to collegiate indoor tracks could do at that time.  And we shared it with others, sometimes as many as twenty kids from different schools lined up on snowy winter nights, after the Watkins basketball practices finally ended, sharing stories and taking their turn to become a better pole vaulter.

Before the raised runway, we still tried to vault in the gym.  We moved the pole vault pit inside, stored in the hallway between the gym and the locker rooms.  Then, when we had access, we’d set it up, and plug in a device called a “vacuum” box.  It was a plastic tray with a vacuum cleaner motor in it, that sucked to the gym floor.  It created a stable spot to put the pole in for a vault into the pit.

But the problem with the vacuum box was that it was at ground level, not the 8” down angled box that is the standard pole vault box.  That changed the entire physics of the vault; requiring vaulters to use a pole a foot shorter than they would in competition.  And, since the box was flat, once the pole reached vertical, the tip “kicked back” out of the box.  That feeling, while up 12’ in the air, was unnerving, even when you know you’re still going to land in the mats.  

So while we did practice indoors in the winter, it wasn’t nearly as productive as actual vaulting.  And when I had an athlete with a serious pole vault issue, one that I could solve only on a real runway, I had to beg college coaches around to let us in.  The NCAA frowned on that, so it didn’t happen very often.  

The Raised Runway

Then, in the late 1990’s, a coaching friend of mine stopped by on a late spring day with an offer.  A parent of one of his vaulters built an entire raised runway, 100’ of heavy wood, with an actual box, 8” lower at the end.  The vaulter graduated, and the school didn’t want to store it.  If I wanted and could store it, I could have it. And boy, did I want it!!!

Thus began the “saga” of Watkins indoor pole vault.  We went a couple of nights a week and often on Sundays, originally storing the pole vault pit in a corner of the gym and the runway on a wooden cart in the hallway.  And since, with eight or ten vaulters, it took about fifteen minutes to set up and tear down everything, we’d start at 9:00pm, and finish around 11:00pm.  Some kids might have been in violation of local curfew laws.  Sometimes I worried, especially about the “guest” vaulters who drove an hour or more to jump. One night, I didn’t realize it snowed a foot while we vaulted, (One of my kid’s parents sure had words for me). But, when you’re moving a whole pole vault pit and building a whole runway, “the more the merrier” made sense.

Vaulting made a huge difference.  Now our kids could go into indoor competitions with actual full vaults on their big poles.  They were ready, vaulting almost as much as we did in the outdoor season practices.  And we saw those benefits right away. One of our vaulters won the “state invitational” (there was no State Indoor meet yet). And when the actual state indoor meet was established (first at Findlay, then Akron, and now at Spires) we had qualifiers and placers almost every year. 

Adventures 

Up until the last couple years, the athletic directors at Watkins were incredibly cooperative.  But there were some “glitches”.  The Fire Marshal determined that the pit (mats) couldn’t be stored inside the gym, worried that it blocked an exit.  So we had to store it outside, up against the building in the winter, then drag it through the narrow doorways into the gym.  The pits were often wet or snowy.  And once there were literally frozen. We had to wait for them to defrost to actually vault. 

And there was always a concern about the gym floor.  We did everything we could to protect it, putting carpet under the wood, and a full “rollout” runway beside it for the kids to walk back on (in track spikes).  But basketball coaches always seemed to have a magnifying glass out, examining the floor for any marks, after we got done. I don’t blame them, I was the same way with the track.

 There were always adventures.  There was the time that I found the wrestlers up on the roof of the gym hallway, diving off the building into the pole vault pits stacked on the side.  I heard their footsteps on the ceiling in the middle of a wrestling tournament.  And once, when I stepped out of the gym for a moment, I came back in to find my vaulters had moved the pit besides the 22’ high bleachers, and were doing “butt drops” from the top.  Then there was the kid from Logan, who completely missed the plant box, went fifteen feet in the air, and landed on his feet on the gym floor.  He was OK, but I didn’t ask him to come back.

Club Vault

And so for more than a decade we had indoor vault at Watkins.  And it was during that decade, the event started to change.

While we were vaulting two or three times a week, there was a new concept in town:  the Buckeye Pole Vault Academy, led by an itinerant Pole Vault Coach named Dave Garcia (he coached everywhere, including Ohio State and Michigan).  Dave leased a barn in rural Delaware County, set up a runway and pit, and charged kids to come.  It was a seven day a week operation.  If you had the time (the barn is a long way from anywhere) and the money (several hundred dollars a month) you could have virtually unlimited access to a full runway and pit.  

Dave altered the pole vault model.  It’s not that the kids went that much higher, but pit (and pole) access allowed them to reach their best heights so much earlier in the season.  Ohio kids no longer had to wait for May to finally get great practice days.  It was always warm and dry in the Barn.  A series of state champions, led by the Uhle brothers (there were three) from Olentangy, cemented Dave’s grip at the top. Today, Dave’s coaching “descendants” are back at the barn, and there’s another coach working with a local university, and a couple of others with indoor facilities every few years.

Around that time I retired from teaching.  I was still coaching at Watkins, but I decided to also try my hand at “private” pole vault coaching.  I found a local fitness center in an old factory building near Granville. It had an unused loft, big enough for a pit, and an 80’ runway.  We set up what we titled “The Vault Loft at ARC”.   

Have Runway, Will Travel

I carried that raised runway up the two flights of stairs by myself, and I used the Watkins pole vault pit (I got some help with that!!).  And for a couple of years, I tried to make a “go” of private coaching.  It never made financial sense, but we did have a lot of athletic success, sending multiple kids from different schools (including Watkins) to the state indoor meet.  Some became outdoor state placers as well.  And I found out what I already knew:  I was a much better coach than a business man.

In the end, the gym owners decided they could make more money putting their weight facility in the loft, and we parted ways.  Meanwhile, there was a new Athletic Director at Watkins, a “new sheriff in town”.  She wanted nothing to do with indoor pole vault.  So the runway moved again, this time to a neighboring school with a more cooperative AD, and a coach who wanted a place to vault.

For the last couple of years I coached (2016, 2017), twice a week I loaded kids up in my big Yukon, and hauled them to the neighboring school at 8pm.  We always outnumbered the kids from the home school, and together we set up the runway and got our practices in.

Finally though, I traded my black coaching shirt for a white officiating one, and left the runway, behind.

Make it Useful

The neighboring school no longer uses the runway, and it was sitting in their storage shed.  A month ago I picked it up, moved it (the last time) to my own storage facility, and put it up for sale.  A pole vault group out of Long Island, New York, was desperate for a way to vault indoors, just like I was in the 1990’s. When they contacted me, I got to tell my story of flying to Yale University in Connecticut back in 1989, then driving a U Haul truck with a pole vault pit back to Pataskala.  Today I helped them load up a U Haul, bound for the coast.

I’m glad to have the runway off my hands.  I’m also glad that there will be more vaulting, thumping down “the boards” that were made two decades before these vaulters were born.  They will be able to have full vaults indoors.  And there’s a New York vault coach so excited, that he’s ready to unload in the middle of the night, whenever the U Haul crosses the Narrows, and finally arrives in its new home on Long Island.

 He’s already scheduled practice for tomorrow.

PS – The Long Island coach set me pictures – all set up with kids on the runway.  It’s a game-changer for him, just like it was for me.  

The Sunday Story Series

2021

2022

2023

2024

Author: Marty Dahlman

I'm Marty Dahlman. After forty years of teaching and coaching track and cross country, I've finally retired!!! I've also spent a lot of time in politics, working campaigns from local school elections to Presidential campaigns.

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