Russ VerSteeg's vaulters set the standard (CT)

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H.S. Track and Field: Area pole vaulters set the standard

By MATT STOUT
mstout@norwichbulletin.com
Posted Apr 13, 2009 @ 11:35 PM
Last update Apr 13, 2009 @ 11:36 PM
Kim Johnson was in California recently, the same state she’ll do her collegiate pole vaulting starting next fall, and as an unattached competitor, grabbed her pole and stepped into a high school track and field meet.

Immediately, she was struck by two things.

“The weather is nice,” the Norwich Free Academy senior said. “And nobody talks to anyone. They kind of just jumped their jumps, and that’s it. It was way different.”

She can do without the rainy, 40-degree April afternoons, but as far as pole vaulting goes in eastern Connecticut, the camaraderie and tight-knit community is something Johnson will miss on the West Coast.

The actual competition isn’t shabby, either.

Cultivated by a collection of experienced coaches and carried out by scores of athletes, the Eastern Connecticut Conference and its surrounding schools have grown into the state’s hot bed for vaulters in outdoor track and field.

Since 2001, local teams have produced at least one state champion every season, and more recently, they’ve been simply dominant.

Since 2006, every State Open champ has come from the area, and every class has featured either a local girls or boys champion. Currently, eight state records are held by an ECC or Windham Tech vaulter, including the best jumps recorded in state history: 11 feet, six inches for girls (NFA’s Jessica Sullivan) and 16-01 for boys (East Lyme’s Jordan Thull).

This season figures to be no different. Johnson is in search of her second straight State Open title, and on the boys side, Woodstock’s Kevin Gibeault (defending Class MM champion), Fitch’s Cory Calamari and Windham Tech’s Tyler Campbell should all challenge for state championships.

The bar, if you will, has been set.

“We have a situation in our conference where you can go to the ECC (championships) and take fourth or fifth place, and go down to your state class meet and win going away,” said Plainfield coach Jeff Parkinson, who helped produce last year’s Class M champ, Seth Auger.

“It’s quite a battle. It’s going to take 14 feet just to be in the top five. You were the man in the state if you did 14 feet a while ago. It’s really exploded the last four or five years.”

Coached up

Don’t expect the run to end anytime soon. The area is blessed with coaches who have churned out state champions, and for as technical event as pole vaulting, their presence, coupled with improved equipment, has meant the difference.

At Woodstock, Gibeault’s father, Dave — a former Division II national champion at Southern Connecticut State — is an assistant coach that’s helped produced the last three MM boys champions. At Plainfield, Parkinson draws from his experience as a decathlete at UConn, and under coach Carl Reichard, East Lyme’s Lauren Bennett won a Class L crown last spring.

Windham Tech’s Rich Zadroga leads one of the area’s most tradition-rich vaulting programs, producing one-time state record holder Wayne Henry in the late 1990s. He has since turned control of the vaulters to assistant Mike Lunt — a former coach at Woodstock — and under the two, the since-graduated Matt Alexander dominated the last two seasons. He won the 2008 State Open title ahead of Calamari, Gibeault and NFA’s Craig Babcock, who all placed in the top five.

“At Windham Tech, when we have new kids come out for track, they’re pole vaulters until they prove to us they’re not,” Zadroga said. “The vault is so exploitable in high school because so many coaches tend to shy away from it.”

Fitch and NFA are two more programs who don’t. Dave Daigneault, in his sixth year coaching in Groton, was a vaulter in high school and college before tearing his hamstring six separate times.

He then turned to coaching in 1978, and since coming to Fitch, his daughter, Jessica, won the 2006 Open title; Jon Wenderoth placed second in Class L and the Open (2005); and Calamari is coming off an indoor season in which he cleared 15 feet and won the Class L crown.

Sixteen feet is the senior’s goal this spring, and “17 feet may not be an issue,” Daigneault said.

“It’s a unique event,” Daigneault said. “It takes kids who are pretty fearless and a little bit crazy and fast. One of the first skills I teach the kids is the back flip; part of it is for fun and part of it is that’s how they roll back (over the bar). And Cory will just stand out in the middle of the track to do a back flip. He’s nuts. Those things are what make him successful.”

NFA hasn’t had as much success on the boys side, but under vaulting coach Russ VerSteeg, the girls program has been a dynasty.

It started with Amy Jancewicz, a two-time LL champion (2003, ’04) and carried on with Sullivan, also a two-time champ and now competes for Notre Dame.

Now it’s Johnson, who jumped 11 feet, 53⁄4 inches at nationals, and junior Kaylan Pickford, who placed second behind Johnson in the Open during last indoor season. After Pickford, it will most likely be Sullivan’s sister, Allie, a freshman who jumped 10 feet in her first meet on Thursday.

“It’s kind of like a one-room schoolhouse,” VerSteeg said. “Even though you have advanced people who have been doing it for four years, the younger people see what they’re going and can learn from her.”

It takes a village ...

VerSteeg has also helped take the entire area to new heights. In what started as kids vaulting in an old pit in VerSteeg’s backyard, Skyjumpers Connecticut is a Norwich-based indoor facility where he trains some 36 competitors weekly. Thull, who also owns the New England high school record; Bacon state record holder Pat Waszczak; and Bennett have all trained there.

“I think that’s one of the reasons when you go to our meets, so many of our kids get along so well,” VerSteeg said. “If you went to the (indoor) State Open, we had kids helping each other. You had Kaylan Pickford helping one of her friends at Glastonbury.”

“Community coaching,” as Daigneault put it, doesn’t end there. The Fitch coach, for example, also worked with Thull. Parkinson said he’s traded or shared poles — and advice — with several teams. Even Johnson will provide instruction when she can.

“It’s a tight-knit group,” Parkinson said. “It’s one of the events where guys are helping each other with technique, watching their run-ups and genuinely rooting for reach other. It’s the event that everybody genuinely has fun, and says, ‘Let’s put this bar higher and see how high we can go.’ ”

Around here, it keeps going higher.

“It’s believable because we have all of these vaulters around there,” Daigneault said. “The rest of the state you’ll see a kid here or there. But there’s a reason why you see state champions coming out of Fitch regularly. That’s not because they have a great and wonderful coach. The poles are good, we have a great staff, we have support from the community and it’s believable because the kids are doing it.”