Lindsay Regan Article
Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2004 12:51 pm
http://www.nj.com/hssports/expresstimes ... 142850.xml
Lindsay Regan
Easton's sophomore vaulter raises bar for whole country
Saturday, June 19, 2004
By BRUCE BURATTI
The Express-Times
During the fall and winter months, Lindsay Regan is a cheerleader encouraging applause for Easton Area High School's football, basketball and wrestling teams.
But when February steps aside for March, April and May, who cheers for Regan, a sophomore pole vaulter who won her first PIAA Class AAA championship three weeks ago and is ranked No. 3 in the United States among scholastic girls?
Let's put it this way, there were nearly 8,000 screaming for her at Shippensburg University when the 16-year-old wunderkind held everyone spellbound during her climb up the vaulting ladder at the state meet May 29 on the infield of Seth Grove Stadium. Everyone hung on Regan's every attempt, and the crowd got louder every time the Forks Township athlete moved the bar up, up, up until it reached 13 feet, 4\ inches. Everyone was fully involved in her morality play.
She flashed her effervescent smile and we all smiled with her.
While the state meet was her crowning achievement, many of Regan's accomplishments this spring were under the cloak of anonymity. Her personal best vault of 13-2 at the Lehigh Valley Conference Championships, an event held on the far eastern end of J. Birney Crum Stadium, was viewed only by other vaulters, a few officials, a reporter or two and even fewer fans.
"It doesn't bother me," Regan says. "My teammates root for me all the time. They've always been supportive."
Regan's vault at the LVC Championships on May 11, in essence, made her queen for a day. It was the best vault by a girl in the country this spring until Danielle O'Reilly of Shawnee, N.J., cleared 13-3 the following afternoon at the Olympic Conference Championships.
Her District 11 and PIAA championships and eventual No. 3 ranking in the U.S. combined to boost Regan to The Express-Times Girls Track and Field Athlete of the Year Award. Her main competition for the honor came from her sister, Courtney, who finished second in the PIAA pole vault, and Freedom's Lauretta Dezubay, who won the state 3,200-meter title.
The Regan sisters and O'Reilly have a history. O'Reilly was once a member of Mike Lawryk's Vertical Assault Club in Bethlehem, and Lindsay beat the southern New Jersey vaulter to win the Penn Relays title in April. Now another vaulter, Sarah Landau of Geneva, Ill., who won the Illinois state title by also clearing 13-3 last week, has entered the national picture.
"Don't know her," Lindsay Regan says. "Most of the top girls I've vaulted against in national meets, but (Landau) I'm not familiar with."
At just 16 -- the embryonic stage of an athletic career -- it would be presumptuous to call Regan the face of the future in women's track and field. Athletic resumes, after all, are not measured in straight up-the-graph progressions but rather are jagged pictures of peaks and valleys. It's how athletes handle the sure-to-be confronted valleys, along with other unforeseen factors, that determine a career's roadmap.
Still, Lindsay has a lot going for her, to say the least. She's energetic, charismatic, photogenic and has tremendous presence. Regan also shows no apparent phobia for the camera lens -- and we mean this in a complimentary sense -- while having a true understanding of seizing the stage. There's a good chance she'll be seizing a much bigger one in the future.
She also intelligent -- a straight "A" student who mixes in a toughness with her visible athletic gifts.
"She's one tough cookie," Easton coach Frank Messa says. "I can remember in one of our meets, Linds hit the bar and it really banged her up pretty badly. She was going up and it hit her on the hip and it came right up and bounced off her shoulder, face, then conked her in the head. But she got right back up and vaulted again like it never happened."
Who knows what the future holds but Regan has her eyes clearly on the prize.
"I want to become the first high school girl to clear 14 feet," she says. "That's my goal."
It's stated not with any degree of defiance or showy declaration. It's merely said matter-of-factly and without rancor. Lindsay is just 6 inches away from the U.S. girls high school record of 13-8 set last year by Kira Kosta of San Joaquin, Calif.
Lindsay's effort of 13-2 ties her for 10th all-time since the U.S. High School Federation began recognizing the girls pole vault in 1999.
What Regan can be most proudest of is her consistency. She's cleared 13 feet in three of her last four competitions, which she sandwiched around her 13-2 LVC effort. She ended each meet with three attempts at 13-4\, which would give her the U.S. sophomore record, barely missing at least five times at that height.
Yet, heaven can wait. Regan concedes that, had she cleared 13-4\, she wouldn't immediately set the bar at 13-9 for a chance for a place in the U.S. Federation record book.
"No, I'd put it at 13-6 next," she says. "I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. I'd rather be more consistent at the lower heights than go for the record before I was ready."
What separates Regan from her competitors? If you break down the stages of the pole vault, she is a little more than ordinary in every phase except one. Even her size, 5-foot-5, 114 pounds, is below average.
She generates good but not blazing speed on her approach down the runway. Her plant in the vaulting box is fundamentally sound but not exceptional. She's strong but does not excessively muscle the pole.
And even she admits the weakest phase of her vault is the final one, the moment her hands leave the pole -- which occurs at the apex of her vault -- to the time she lands in the pit.
Where Lindsay separates herself from the field is in the phase vaulters term "the swing," that nanosecond from the vaulter's plant to the time her hands let go of the pole. Regan starts her climb with an accelerated knee drive, where, at about two-thirds of the way into her ascent, she suddenly executes a "snap" that drives her momentum straight up and over the bar, much like a golf shot that hits the 200-yard mark then suddenly explodes into a higher second climb through the air.
Her gymnastics background is part of this "snap," but other factors are involved, too, not the least of which is her ability to put herself at the total mercy of the pole.
Another pivotal person in Regan's success is John Kerbaugh, Easton's pole vaulting coach. Guidance from two sources could conceivably be a recipe for disaster, but the relationship works well. Kerbaugh, who generally defers to Lawryk, is to be given credit for stepping back when the situation warrants it but is there, too, when Lindsay needs coaching expertise.
Lawryk was asked, hypothetically, if Regan were six feet tall, had a male vaulter's strength and her midair mechanics, how high would she be going. Lawryk, who has coached her the past three years, answered without hesitation: "Seventeen feet. Easy."
Even Chelo Canino, a Princeton vaulter who recently finished sixth in the NCAA Championships and is also a member of Lawryk's Vertical Assault Club, is awed by Regan.
"Lindsay's just a carnival act," Canino says. "Her swing is what puts her at the level she's at now."
Stacy Dragila of the U.S. is the world's No. 1 women's vaulter, recently clearing a world outdoor record 15-10. But Dragila doesn't serve as Regan's role model.
"I've never met her but I do remember something she said in a story I read about her," Lindsay says. "She said you sometimes have to get worse before you get better. I think there's a lot of truth in that."
Regan's inspiration, however, comes from Jenny Green, a freshman vaulter at the University of Nebraska, who recently finished third in the NCAA Championships by clearing 13-9\.
"We met when she was still in high school last year and she was very supportive of me," Lindsay says. "We still e-mail each other and she's always encouraging me."
Still, the goal of 14 feet looms ahead of her over the next two years. And while the sky might be the limit, Regan's ascent up the pole vault standards seems to have no boundaries.
Lindsay Regan
Easton's sophomore vaulter raises bar for whole country
Saturday, June 19, 2004
By BRUCE BURATTI
The Express-Times
During the fall and winter months, Lindsay Regan is a cheerleader encouraging applause for Easton Area High School's football, basketball and wrestling teams.
But when February steps aside for March, April and May, who cheers for Regan, a sophomore pole vaulter who won her first PIAA Class AAA championship three weeks ago and is ranked No. 3 in the United States among scholastic girls?
Let's put it this way, there were nearly 8,000 screaming for her at Shippensburg University when the 16-year-old wunderkind held everyone spellbound during her climb up the vaulting ladder at the state meet May 29 on the infield of Seth Grove Stadium. Everyone hung on Regan's every attempt, and the crowd got louder every time the Forks Township athlete moved the bar up, up, up until it reached 13 feet, 4\ inches. Everyone was fully involved in her morality play.
She flashed her effervescent smile and we all smiled with her.
While the state meet was her crowning achievement, many of Regan's accomplishments this spring were under the cloak of anonymity. Her personal best vault of 13-2 at the Lehigh Valley Conference Championships, an event held on the far eastern end of J. Birney Crum Stadium, was viewed only by other vaulters, a few officials, a reporter or two and even fewer fans.
"It doesn't bother me," Regan says. "My teammates root for me all the time. They've always been supportive."
Regan's vault at the LVC Championships on May 11, in essence, made her queen for a day. It was the best vault by a girl in the country this spring until Danielle O'Reilly of Shawnee, N.J., cleared 13-3 the following afternoon at the Olympic Conference Championships.
Her District 11 and PIAA championships and eventual No. 3 ranking in the U.S. combined to boost Regan to The Express-Times Girls Track and Field Athlete of the Year Award. Her main competition for the honor came from her sister, Courtney, who finished second in the PIAA pole vault, and Freedom's Lauretta Dezubay, who won the state 3,200-meter title.
The Regan sisters and O'Reilly have a history. O'Reilly was once a member of Mike Lawryk's Vertical Assault Club in Bethlehem, and Lindsay beat the southern New Jersey vaulter to win the Penn Relays title in April. Now another vaulter, Sarah Landau of Geneva, Ill., who won the Illinois state title by also clearing 13-3 last week, has entered the national picture.
"Don't know her," Lindsay Regan says. "Most of the top girls I've vaulted against in national meets, but (Landau) I'm not familiar with."
At just 16 -- the embryonic stage of an athletic career -- it would be presumptuous to call Regan the face of the future in women's track and field. Athletic resumes, after all, are not measured in straight up-the-graph progressions but rather are jagged pictures of peaks and valleys. It's how athletes handle the sure-to-be confronted valleys, along with other unforeseen factors, that determine a career's roadmap.
Still, Lindsay has a lot going for her, to say the least. She's energetic, charismatic, photogenic and has tremendous presence. Regan also shows no apparent phobia for the camera lens -- and we mean this in a complimentary sense -- while having a true understanding of seizing the stage. There's a good chance she'll be seizing a much bigger one in the future.
She also intelligent -- a straight "A" student who mixes in a toughness with her visible athletic gifts.
"She's one tough cookie," Easton coach Frank Messa says. "I can remember in one of our meets, Linds hit the bar and it really banged her up pretty badly. She was going up and it hit her on the hip and it came right up and bounced off her shoulder, face, then conked her in the head. But she got right back up and vaulted again like it never happened."
Who knows what the future holds but Regan has her eyes clearly on the prize.
"I want to become the first high school girl to clear 14 feet," she says. "That's my goal."
It's stated not with any degree of defiance or showy declaration. It's merely said matter-of-factly and without rancor. Lindsay is just 6 inches away from the U.S. girls high school record of 13-8 set last year by Kira Kosta of San Joaquin, Calif.
Lindsay's effort of 13-2 ties her for 10th all-time since the U.S. High School Federation began recognizing the girls pole vault in 1999.
What Regan can be most proudest of is her consistency. She's cleared 13 feet in three of her last four competitions, which she sandwiched around her 13-2 LVC effort. She ended each meet with three attempts at 13-4\, which would give her the U.S. sophomore record, barely missing at least five times at that height.
Yet, heaven can wait. Regan concedes that, had she cleared 13-4\, she wouldn't immediately set the bar at 13-9 for a chance for a place in the U.S. Federation record book.
"No, I'd put it at 13-6 next," she says. "I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. I'd rather be more consistent at the lower heights than go for the record before I was ready."
What separates Regan from her competitors? If you break down the stages of the pole vault, she is a little more than ordinary in every phase except one. Even her size, 5-foot-5, 114 pounds, is below average.
She generates good but not blazing speed on her approach down the runway. Her plant in the vaulting box is fundamentally sound but not exceptional. She's strong but does not excessively muscle the pole.
And even she admits the weakest phase of her vault is the final one, the moment her hands leave the pole -- which occurs at the apex of her vault -- to the time she lands in the pit.
Where Lindsay separates herself from the field is in the phase vaulters term "the swing," that nanosecond from the vaulter's plant to the time her hands let go of the pole. Regan starts her climb with an accelerated knee drive, where, at about two-thirds of the way into her ascent, she suddenly executes a "snap" that drives her momentum straight up and over the bar, much like a golf shot that hits the 200-yard mark then suddenly explodes into a higher second climb through the air.
Her gymnastics background is part of this "snap," but other factors are involved, too, not the least of which is her ability to put herself at the total mercy of the pole.
Another pivotal person in Regan's success is John Kerbaugh, Easton's pole vaulting coach. Guidance from two sources could conceivably be a recipe for disaster, but the relationship works well. Kerbaugh, who generally defers to Lawryk, is to be given credit for stepping back when the situation warrants it but is there, too, when Lindsay needs coaching expertise.
Lawryk was asked, hypothetically, if Regan were six feet tall, had a male vaulter's strength and her midair mechanics, how high would she be going. Lawryk, who has coached her the past three years, answered without hesitation: "Seventeen feet. Easy."
Even Chelo Canino, a Princeton vaulter who recently finished sixth in the NCAA Championships and is also a member of Lawryk's Vertical Assault Club, is awed by Regan.
"Lindsay's just a carnival act," Canino says. "Her swing is what puts her at the level she's at now."
Stacy Dragila of the U.S. is the world's No. 1 women's vaulter, recently clearing a world outdoor record 15-10. But Dragila doesn't serve as Regan's role model.
"I've never met her but I do remember something she said in a story I read about her," Lindsay says. "She said you sometimes have to get worse before you get better. I think there's a lot of truth in that."
Regan's inspiration, however, comes from Jenny Green, a freshman vaulter at the University of Nebraska, who recently finished third in the NCAA Championships by clearing 13-9\.
"We met when she was still in high school last year and she was very supportive of me," Lindsay says. "We still e-mail each other and she's always encouraging me."
Still, the goal of 14 feet looms ahead of her over the next two years. And while the sky might be the limit, Regan's ascent up the pole vault standards seems to have no boundaries.
