Replacing Pits Not A Priority In Walker, MN

[rainbowgirl28]

http://www.walkermn.com/placed/index.ph ... _id=153456

I thought it was interesting that they approved spending $32,000 on replacing draperies, but did not approve $9,700 to replace the pole vault pits.

Wonder if they looked into upgrading their pits?

[Russ]

I am a huge proponent of using larger pits. We all know, however, that they are extremely big-ticket items, and many schools and school systems have and will continue to de facto cut the pole vault by refusing to put such a large item in their budget. I would encourage all of you older generation folks (I'm one of you!) to contact your old h.s. teammates to try to find a way to raise the money necessary to purchase new, legal pits for your old schools. My old h.s., which has a tradition of strong vaulting (15'9" school record), didn't have the money last year and couldn't support its vault program. It's a shame that that has happened in so many places. We alumni should try to help the young vaulters out if we can possibly find a way to drum up donations for new pits for our alma mater.

[Barto]

Another point that is often overlooked is the misinformation concerning the cost of upgrading or a new pit.

It is true that a school CAN spend $12-15,000 dollars on a new pit, but they by no means HAVE to cost that much. Jan Johnson (skyjumpers.com) has information on how to legally upgrade your pit for as little as $2000 dollars.

I sell brand new pits in the $7000 dollar range all the time.

It is not a cheap item, but not nearly as expensive as many are led to believe it is.

Barto

[vaultdad]

Here's a clue on the "cost" of Pole Vault pits.

Its the first item cut from an budget and T&F is usually the last to be considered after football,soccer,basketball,volleyball, swimming,golf, and cross-country. Yeah, I said cross-country because they have to spend money to cut the grass before a meet! Usually, CC gets very little else.

When I investigated the pits used at our school I found their original age (1980) and the standards were upgraded in 2001 from the original Blazer standards purchased in the mid 60's. Before that, the pit was sawdust and wood, which eventually got a foam chunking in a net-bag upgrade. That's why most high schoolers didn't vault well. In any event, our HJ &PV pits were purchased as "used" from the 1980 MO state meet. If your equipment is now used by 6 grades (HS & JrH) and is 20 years old, it has served out its cost justification pretty well! Even then, most pieces are still good as extra padding. I guess what I'm saying is: If you paid $2,000 for it twenty years ago, don't complain about the replacement cost. Spend the time to ascess what you have and buy quality, not quantity.

We took our old PV pit and turned it into a nice sized HJ pit for $0.

It can be done, just use a little common sense.

[Lord of the Poles]

actually, at my hs, T&F is actually pretty good, and like the 3rd popular sport there... When they built the new school, my coach got a very large amount of money for the team and bought the biggest pits he could get...so we were all set when the standards changed on us unexpectedly...

[achtungpv]

My old high school got an $4 million endowment for athletics from an oil company a few years back...it's probably the only 400 student high school in the country with a 35 yard indoor football facility for those 5 bad weather days a year. The coach is gonna one day get around to building a board runway for vaulting year round indoors there.