Instead of more prep gold, Shade Weygandt raised the bar (TX

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http://www.star-telegram.com/sports/story/1505942.html

Instead of more prep gold, former Mansfield vaulter raised the bar
BY CARLOS MENDEZ
cmendez@star-telegram.com

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Star-Telegram/Ron Jenkins
At the Pan Am Games, Shade Weygandt has a last shot at a U.S. high school record. Star-Telegram/Ron Jenkins

If Shade Weygandt had followed through with her senior season, she would probably have four gold medals in the UIL girls pole vault.

But she skipped it. She graduated early from Mansfield High School, leaving in January as a three-time state champion and the state-meet record holder in the event.

She signed with Texas Tech, and at a meet in Albuquerque in June, still technically a high school athlete, she became the first Texas girl to clear 14 feet.

Two weeks ago, she won the silver medal at the USA Track and Field national junior meet and earned a spot on the junior team that will compete at the Pan Am Games next week in Trinidad and Tobago.

No wonder she skipped her senior season of high school track. The 18-year-old has long been zooming past the competition at her level.

"She’s at 14 feet right now, which would have put her in the top six in the NCAAs this year," her former high school coach, Laurie Ellison, said. "So she’s vaulting with the best college women, and yet age-wise, she’s still a senior in high school. At the rate she’s progressing, the Olympics have to be in the picture somewhere. If she gets to 16 feet, it would put her with the elite in the nation."

For now, Weygandt is still a high school athlete for record-keeping purposes. The Olympics and international competition are a long way off. But the road after high school begins after the Pan Am Games, which start Thursday, when she will have one more chance to go for the national high school outdoor record of 14-1, set in 2007 by Tori Anthony of Palo Alto (Calif.) Castilleja.

Weygandt already owns the UIL state meet record of 13-7, which she set as a sophomore.

"Pole vaulters always want more," she said. "No one’s ever had a perfect jump. You might say, 'That was a good jump,’ but you always want more."

About three days before the end of her junior year at Mansfield, Weygandt decided to try to graduate early. She took correspondence courses over the summer, loaded up on credits in the fall and had enough that she didn’t need her second semester as a senior.

She was smart enough to do it academically. But athletically, there was another reason.

Ellison, her high school coach, was leaving the athletic department, and Weygandt wasn’t sure what the change would mean for her competition plans. The senior-to-be was used to jetting off to prestigious meets in the fall and winter as she liked, but she wasn’t sure that would be fair to a new coach.

If she wasn’t in school to begin with, she figured she wouldn’t be missed.

"It was probably the best decision I ever made," Weygandt said.

She spent most of the summer and fall recovering from a back injury that had limited her winning height at the state meet that season to 13 feet.

But by the spring, in what would have been her senior high school season, she was back in form. She was fourth at an indoor meet at Texas Tech in February. Competing unattached, she won the university division of the Horned Frog Invitational in March and was second at the Mean Green Twilight Invitational in Denton in April.

Then came the performance at the Great Southwest meet in Albuquerque, followed by a mark of 13-11 3/4 at the USA Track and Field juniors in June, one week before the UIL state meet, where 12-6 won the Class 5A championship.

Weygandt began vaulting as a seventh grader, but it wasn’t even her idea. A friend wanted to try the event and talked her into trying with her.

"It was just for fun. I was like, 'All right. I’ll go with you,’ " Weygandt said. "I was not exceptionally good. I was brave, not exceptionally good, but I just loved it. I fell in love with it."

By eighth grade, she had a private coach. She set up her own pit in her back yard and practiced nonstop.

"Her workouts last hours, and she trains year-round," Ellison said.

Weygandt has let herself think about the Olympics, but not too much.

"I have a goal of the Olympic trials in 2012," she said. "If I can put things together and get to the Olympics, that would be great."

And at her pace, no surprise.

High number
Shade Weygandt of Mansfield cleared 14 feet at a meet in Albuquerque in June, the best mark by a Texas high school girl. To put it in perspective:

It would have been the women’s world record as recently as 1995.

It is 1 inch shy of the national high school record.

This year’s outdoor NCAA Division I women’s pole vault winner went 14-1 3/4 .

The American women’s record is 16-1 3/4 by Jenn Stuczynski.

The women’s world record is 16-6 3/4 by Yelena Isinbayeva of Russia.