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The practice itself is a tough one, but the idea is quite simple. Take a pole and go blazing down the runway to vault yourself over a bar in the air. A lot of details and technicalities go into that simple idea, though.

That is part of what makes the pole vault such a frustrating and rewarding sport all in the same.

“I think that is why vaulters are their own little cult and community,” Winnetonka High coach Jeff Fogel said. “They understand that certain days you just aren’t going to be able to execute the same things you could yesterday. It is certainly different from day to day.

“It is so different than a 100-meter runner. They may run a 12.3 one day and a 12.4 the next. It is going to be pretty close. Vaulting is different. You can be off three or four inches and it can cause a two-foot difference on your height.

“Some days when you are feeling it and bringing it, you can put some big bars up. There are other days when you can’t make a bar. As a vaulter you have to fight through it. There are a lot of peaks and valleys. You have to fight your way out of those valleys; that is why it takes a special kid.”

Some of those valleys are the lowest of lows. In 1992, former decathlon world-record holder Dan O’Brien no-heighted at the Olympic trials to deny him a trip to Barcelona, Spain. At the 2009 Class 3 Missouri State Track and Field Championships, Kearney pole vaulter Sydney Haase, the clear favorite in the event, no-heighted at her opening height of 10 feet.

It was a vault Haase had made with no problems all season, but at the state meet it was not in the cards.

“If you have a bad day, you have a bad day,” former three-time state medalist Nichole Manning said. “There is nothing you can do at all. It is very frustrating. There are plenty of days where your run doesn’t feel right, or you don’t have your legs underneath you and don’t feel fast enough.”

As Fogel says, there is not one thing particularly challenging about the event, but it is the amount of little things that add up to provide the ultimate test.

“It is the combination of things you have to do extremely well. That is what makes it so difficult,” Fogel said. “You have to practice. The drills kids are doing in practice on Day One are things they are still doing on Day 500 as a college-level vaulter.”

Sports writer Bill Knust can be reached at 389-6605 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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