In the Gorham field house, a handful of men and women are pulling giant carbon-fiber rods out of a large bag.
One takes a starting position, a long pole held in front of him as he squints toward the pile of thick blue mats and takes in his breath.
His face goes taut and his fists white as he sprints forward, plants one end of the pole in a trapezoidal groove in the floor and is launched up, up, over a suspended crossbar. He crashes down, sinking into the mats, and rolls off to join his teammates, who are stretching on the green rubber field house floor.
It’s Wednesday night: pole vaulting practice.
One of the more technical and intimidating events in track and field, pole vaulting doubles as a physics lesson in energy conversion – the pole, whose flexibility and length varies according to the athlete’s size and skill, is a tool used to turn a short sprint into a high and graceful flight.
The relationship between the athlete and the equipment is about as intimate as it gets.
“It is a rush the first time you feel that pole bend,” says senior Adam Haggerty.
Senior Taryn Clark has a different, but equally vivid memory. “The first time I did it, when the pole bent, I went flying straight backwards.”
An awesome sight to spectators, plenty of athletes steer clear of the event – it takes guts and a little technique to launch yourself 10-15 feet into the air and not fly backwards onto the runway.
No matter how much they love it today, several on USM’s squad describe being dragged into it by friends.
One notable exception is freshman Christina Connolly, who has been vaulting since her Boise, Idaho, school would allow it, at the minimum age of 13.
Originally, it was a way of getting around her mother’s reluctance to let her do gymnastics. Today, it’s her “absolute favorite” track event.
“It’s similar to other events,” she says. “People try to psych each other out at competitions. But you really have to get into a certain mindset for pole vaulting.”
Last week, she was named LEC Rookie Field Athlete of the Year for her performance in the winter indoor track season – the first-year athlete captured the pole vault title in the New England Alliance and Little East Conference championships with a 3.05 meter jump that was 31 centimeters higher than the second place vault.
She took third in the New England Division III championship and 10th in the Eastern Collegiate Athletics Conference championships, where she had her best vault of the season – 10 feet, 6.75 inches.
A senior on the men’s team, Adam Haggerty is a star in his own right: on April 14, he matched the USM record of 15 feet, 3 inches, set by Nick Joy in 2000. Haggerty is currently the state’s Division III indoor champion.
“You can tell some people just look like they’d be naturals at it,” he says, as he watches Connolly prepare for a vault. “Sometimes people just have a different personality to them, they don’t have that fear. The psychological factor in pole vaulting is huge – if you can’t get past that, then you’re never going to go very high.”
Though Haggerty is the highest-flying Husky, another man at practice has been even higher: the USM vaulting coach, Mike Drummey, holds the New England record of 18 feet, 6.5 inches, and just about every member of the team likes to talk about it. The world record is just over 20 feet.
Injuries have taken him out of competition, and so today, Drummey stands next to USM’s cross bar, offering feedback as his vaulters bounce of the mat.
April marked the change in season from indoor to outdoor track, and nearly all the athletes here train for both seasons.
Outside, vaulting is essentially the same – with a few factors, like wind and rain, to make things more interesting.
“My biggest is a 16 foot pole,” says Haggerty. “And that’s basically a sail when it’s straight up in the air and you’re running down at a full sprint and there’s a breeze.”
And water in the box – that trapezoidal groove – can make the crucial plant, which determines how their forward momentum is transferred to the bending pole, a lot less reliable.
USM doesn’t have an outdoor venue for track and field, or we’d direct you to their next home event. If you’re ever in the field house on a Wednesday night, their practice is almost as awesome to watch.
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A Brief History of Pole Vaulting
It’s all fun and games now, but pole vaulting actually grew out of necessity — in the middle ages, Europeans used a primitive version to shoot themselves over watery canals.
The idea of aiming for height rather than distance first occurred to German gymnasts in the 18th century, where it became a popular competition.
A much more familiar technique was developed in the United States in the late 1880s. Poles were first made from bamboo, then even stiffer aluminum and steel. Needless to say, the event was altered further and athletes launched higher with the development of flexible fiberglass and carbon fiber.
Aside from being one of the four standard jumping events in track and field, pole vaulting is also the eighth event in the decathlon.
In this modern, standardized version, only fifteen people are known to have cleared six meters (approx. 20 feet). These elites comprise what is known as the ‘six meter club.’