Pole Vaulters Unite!

[Biggie1110]

Dear fellow pole vaulters,

My name is Jeremy and I am a Junior pole vaulter at Kent State University. I was blessed this past weekend to have been given the oppurtunity to vault at the Tyson Invitational along side the best collegiate vaulters in the country. I would like to congratulate Jeff Coover for an amazing performance and give a big thumbs up to all the other competitors. It was truly awesome to share the runway with such amazing talents.

I also had the great honor to chat for a while with Jeff Hartwig on Friday night during the Womens vault.(Congrats to Jenn by the way. She is very sweet in person.) If you dont already know, Jeff has been a strong proponent of a United States Pole Vault Tour. The idea is to create a self sustaining grand prix style circuit for Pole Vault in the United States, eventually culminating with a national championships. I think I speak on behalf of everyone here when i say how freakishly incredible such a tour would be. Could you imagine packing a thousand or more people around a raised runway inside an old gym to watch the nations elite battle it out. I am talking about taking pole vault to the next level. I am talking about bringing it to the national spotlight and once and for all legitimizing our United States Pole Vaulting program as the definitive pole vauliting program in the world! This would all be leading up to London in 2012.

The demise of all great ideas such as this one is typically money related. After all we still do live in The United States, and it is 2009. So with that in mind I call upon all willing participants to start brainstorming. Start thinking of ways that this could be done legitimately with as little cost as humanly possible. I know there are colleges and high schools out there who would geek out over the thought of bringing Brad Walker, Tim Mack, Toby Stevenson, etc... to their facility to host one of the stops on the pole vault circuit. As a matter of fact; Let it be known that Kent State University will be hosting a street vault in historical downtown Kent Ohio this summer. We have just built a brand new board runway, and I am not lying to you when I say that there IS NOT a board runway in this country with as much jack as this one. We just got our entire indoor facility, including our ridiculously fast board runway, resurfaced with the brand new mondo that was used in the Beijing Olympics. We were the first indoor facility in the world to have this surface. (two weeks before a facility in Germany)

In conlusion, I want to say that I am not trying to take any steam from Jeff's progress. What I mean to say is that I dont wish to interfere in any way with what Stu has already got in mind or with what hes already accomplished. After my conversation with him I kind of got the feeling that he was a little dejected that this idea is not flying as smoothly and quickly as he would want. It left me feeling sad because it is such a great idea and I know that there are thousands of us who want to see this happen more than anything. What I offer is my whole support in his idea and his plan. I call on everyone to do whatever they can to support him and his venture.

Details on the street vault coming soon...

Thanks, Jeremy

[KirkB]

The US PV Tour that Jeremey is referring to Hartwig organizing is explained here, in the "US PV Tour 2009" thread: http://polevaultpower.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16609.

The venues for this tour would be big box store parking lots.

The low-cost alternative that he's talking about would apparently be in "old gyms".

Either way, I think it's a great idea! Have an indoor circuit OR an outdoor circuit! Whatever works!

Ours is an eXtreme sport - as good as any of the other eXtreme sports that get great TV coverage.

It's time to take it to the next level!

Kirk