Kristen Hafford article (NJ)

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Only way to go is up
Skyland girls track. Pole vaulting is for the unique, and Kristen Hafford, of Warren Hills, fills the bill.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
By BRUCE BURATTI
The Express-Times
The pole vault event sticks out like a sore thumb in a track and field meet.

It is not even really a track event; it's a gymnastics exercise that traditionally attracts daredevils, midair mechanics and free spirits yearning to break free from the conventional.

Kristen Hafford, a senior at Warren Hills Regional High School, found the act of pole vaulting a perfect fit for her high-energy personality. It held particular fascination for her as a freshman neophyte and still does as she attempts to defend her NJSIAA Meet of Champions title in a sensitive event that is not for the faint of heart.

Even the way she looks at the sport is a little different than other track and field athletes look at theirs.

"The most frustrating thing for me is to get off a good technical vault and you easily clear a lower height," said Hafford, who cleared 12 feet four times last year, including back-to-back weeks in the Group 3 Championships and the M of C.

"The bar will be, like, 10 feet or 10-6 and I'll get off a really good vault that has me easily clearing the bar. I'll think to myself, I would have cleared 12 feet or 12-6 with that one. Why couldn't I have done that when the bar is set that high? It's like you wasted a really good attempt."

Hafford is not one to take an extended time off from vaulting. She competed at several national meets last summer and extensively indoors over the winter.

Hafford, who recently committed to Northeastern University in Boston, is nursing a back injury that even she's not sure how she sustained in a sport where injuries are a major part of the landscape.

"Kristen needs rest," Warren Hills coach Dan Diveny said. "Sometimes I think she's a little too devoted to the sport. She would vault at an (indoor) meet, have a tough time and instead of shutting herself down for a while, she couldn't wait to get to the next meet and redeem herself. That's where I think she injured her back."

Admittedly, Hafford is a perfectionist who likely suffered her injury not as the result of one specific vault but an accumulation of running, planting and landing repeatedly in the pit while putting herself at the mercy of her pole.

"The problem started about three weeks ago," Hafford said. "It's my mechanics. Sometimes they're not the greatest. I have this tendency to get the pole too much underneath me instead of out in front of me when I plant, and that causes problems."

As a member of Mike Lawryk's Vertical Assault Club in Bath, she vaults with club members Lindsay Regan and Abby Schaffer, of Easton, Beki Finn and Becky Frey, of Liberty, Brooke Borso, of Whitehall, Jacque Meissner, of Saucon Valley and Julia Green, of Emmaus.

Hafford joined Vertical Assault last year after spending most of the previous year and a half at the HIP Athletic Club in southern New Jersey.

"It's only a 40-minute drive from my home to Bath and it took me anywhere from an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes to get to the HIP club," Hafford said. "Plus, Mike is so good with the technical part of vaulting."

Hafford is training conservatively to prepare for the upcoming season. While her duel last season was with Julianne Toto, of Middletown South, Hafford's main competition this season in New Jersey appears to be coming from Princeton High's Natalie Gengel, who finished fourth last season in Group 4 and is coming off an outstanding indoor season.

"I took a whole week off about two weeks ago, and now I'm just easing my way back into it," she said. "Whatever doesn't hurt my back, I do."