Mt. Sac, Penn Relays, Florida Relays, Texas Relays, on and on…

Outdoor track brings a host of multi-day track meets that involve hundreds of schools. The best part of outdoor track is that these events bring together high school, college, and professional competition. While the athletes of course compete separately, it’s an incredibly opportunity for the younger athletes to see how the elites warm-up and stay focused through the competition.

Can you imagine if every Sunday was high school, college, then the NFL? Your local school, University of Maryland playing at Ohio State, followed by a Bengals game, all in the same stadium. Now, there’s a plethora of reasons this logistically would be incredibly difficult, but interesting nonetheless.

I remember during the 2015 outdoor season, I was at Penn Relays and committed to the University of Tennessee. On Saturday morning when the men’s collegiate competition was competing, a UT vaulter gave me their orange jacket so I could fit in with the rest of the crowd on the field and I got a front row seat to the competition.

Before we get into the results of Mt. Sac, let’s talk about the entries for Penn Relays. It looks like Wyatt Stewart will be the favorite for the competition - it also appears he’ll be the one traveling the farthest. The northeast isn’t known for huge competitions like the south and west are used to, so this will be the first time MANY of these vaulters are seeing each other. This also may be the first time in recent years that Maryland hasn’t seen a boys vaulter compete.

In the girl’s competition, Veronica Vacca (PR 13’8.25”) is favorite in a strong field of vaulters. Veronica is only class of 2025 and attends Brian Mondschein’s Philly Jumps Club.

One of the great highlights out of Mt. Sac is Austin Miller’s 5.80m jump. After chasing it for years, Austin Miller jumped 5.81m indoors at VT to hit the world standard and it’s AWESOME to him right back at 80 mark in outdoors. Austin won the elite invitational which also Antonio Ruiz, Luke Winder, and some of the top collegiate vaulters.

On the women’s side, Nastassja Campbell took home the win with 4.55m which is a PR for her. Olivia Gruver also made a start, jumping 4.45m for a top 5 finish. Double-click on Olivia’s post below to see her jumps from the meet.

The women’s college division was split into multiple heats across Friday with Gennifer Hirata of South Dakota jumping a PR of 4.45m for the win! Skyler Magula of California won the men’s division with a PR of 5.55m. With the hip height he had on it, there’s certainly higher bars in his near future.

In the high school division, Maxwell McFarlane took home the gold on misses! It was a 16’ even jump needed to get into the top 2 while 15’6” took home third. Iliana Downing dominated the girls competition, winning by more than a foot with 13’9”.

If you’re not on Twitter, there’s more track and field conversation happening then you probably think. From college coaches to recruiting tips being dropped, there’s some great insight. Now that outdoor has started, there’s been a number of conversations and debates and I wanted to bring one up here.

Pole vault takes a lot of time to be elite. If you start pole vaulting as a freshman, then getting to jump 2x a month for 4 months out of the year is nearly guaranteed not enough time to get to jumping at state championship levels in many states. (There’s exceptions but we’re talking generally.)

A freshman shows up for the first day of indoor track practice in November (or January if you’re in the south for outdoor). They are a stud of an athlete. After the first few weeks of practice, the athlete has expressed they would like to focus on pole vaulting. Come March through May, the head coach of the school has them spending 1-2 days a week on pole vault and the other days training in other field events, relays, etc. At meets, they’re always in 3 or 4 events because the school needs points.

If you’re the athlete or parent of the athlete, what would you do?

I’m actually a believer that this is why we’re seeing the rise of more and more athletes and parents wanting to attend private clubs. On one hand, 99% of high schools don’t have the equipment to help a high school pole vaulter reach their full potential, whether that be poles or a well trained pole vault coach. On the other hand, elite athletes are often stolen out of field events in high school to focus on running events. If a head coach is so focused on winning meets, a pole vaulter might be in competition for 1-3 hours, while they could have run the 100, 200, 4x1, hurdles, maybe gotten a long jump mark in, etc etc.

I also think this is why many pole vault coaches are pushing to form their own clubs outside of the school system. It means the pole vault coach doesn’t have to argue about time with athletes or argue about getting certain athletes to try pole vault in the first place. It puts the initiative entirely on the athlete and their parents.

Now, I’m not opposed to vaulters doing other events. In many cases, it’s great additional training. During my junior and senior year, I competed in the hurdles, high jump, and the 4x200. However, it was also my choice to do it at this meet or not. Or in the case of the 4x200, I was always done pole vaulting by the time the 4x200 rolled around because it was the second to last event of the meet.

This is how high school sports should be. It’s not about getting everything out of every kid for extra points. High school athletics are about helping the kids thrive in a way they get the most fulfillment.