Pole Vaulting in Phoenix

Did you ever dream of soar­ing through the air at 7+ feet or higher? I def­i­nitely did not, but that is exactly what I was doing Fri­day night. How Aaron gets me into these things is beyond me but after last night’s meet, I was really glad he got me into this one.

A lit­tle over a year ago Aaron found out about a pole vault­ing club in Tuc­son. He was pumped — he hadn’t vaulted since high school and fan­ta­sized about soar­ing over a 14 foot bar again. I was excited for him but never imag­ined myself vault­ing. Hav­ing a lit­tle fear of heights, I don’t think pole vault­ing is some­thing I would grav­i­tate towards. After a few prac­tices Aaron talked me into going to watch. I am not a watcher — I am a doer. I didn’t last long just watch­ing. That first night I just got on the tram­po­line to “warm up” — it was a cool night for just sit­ting around. The next prac­tice I went to try this pole vault­ing thing.

Men­tal Preparation

Well learn­ing how to pole vault has been a slow process with a cou­ple of injuries along the way but here I am a year later com­pet­ing in my first meet. It wasn’t as scary as I antic­i­pated, in fact it was rather excit­ing and not scary at all. I was the only female vaulter thus, as long as I cleared some­thing, I would “win”. Well I started at 6 ft. and cleared that with no prob­lems. We bumped it up 6 inches and I cleared it again — no prob­lem. Seven feet took two attempts to clear and 7’6″ proved too much for me. After every jump I was giddy with excite­ment. It was hard to believe that I was actu­ally pole vaulting.

I am excited about our next meet and look­ing for­ward to prac­tice. I have lots left to learn — in my opin­ion I have only learned half of the vault — I can plant and jump but I don’ t really invert or turn over the bar. It makes clear­ing the bar a lit­tle dif­fi­cult since I go over side­ways. I tend to be a slow method­i­cal learner, espe­cially when it comes to sports but you know, the beauty of the whole thing is that I can learn this at a grad­ual pace. I am not lim­ited to a 3 month track sea­son or even four years of high school. I really have as long as my won­der­ful coaches are will­ing to coach.

To be quite hon­est, as with most new things I try the vault has really been a life les­son for me. The most impor­tant thing about the vault for me is learn­ing how to step out of my com­fort zone into an area of uncer­tainty in order to improve. If I never leave my com­fort zone, I don’t chal­lenge myself to become bet­ter. I put a lot of trust in my coaches and in myself that I can do what I am asked to do. With each lit­tle suc­cess, a sliver of con­fi­dence is gained. That con­fi­dence is crit­i­cal for me. If I don’t believe I can do some­thing I usu­ally won’t. How­ever if I believe I can, I have a much greater chance of actu­ally doing it. So as for me in the vault, nine feet here I come!

Oh yeah, I also did long jump at the meet — it was ugly– enough said!

View the rest of the pic­tures from the meet (includ­ing some of Aaron) .