PoleVaultPower.com

Hey...just curious...but I was wondering how everyone started pole vaulting? In other words, why did you decide to pole vault, and how did you get started doing it?
I started doing pv after I quit gymnastics...I had gone to watch part of a practice when one of my friend's older sister was doing it...thought it was amazing at the Trials...and then came out and got hooked. Now I'm obsessed with it.

well after xc, was indoor. i decided to give field events a try, hj and tj looks pretty cool, so did pv but that was kinda scary hah. well after a few pracs just doing hj , my friends were already doing pv, and so i decided to give it a try. then my coach started telling me that i couldnt do it cause id prob hurt myself, and i could be a good distance runner "like my brother". well that pissed me off and so i kept doing both.. i was horrible at first but now im one of the better kids on the team adn i score every meet.. so he makes me do it heh

i wasn't given a choice

my 8th grade year, the HS vault coach tried to get me to vault that spring, but I thought it looked gay and wanted to focus on the high jump and long jump. He ended up being one of my football coaches and my JV basketball coach the next year and kept telling me that I was going to pole vault in the spring. I kept telling him that I didn't want to, so he said I wouldn't play in any of the basketball games until I agreed to at least try it. I rode the pine for half the season until i finally gave in. I tried it the next day and loved it!

for me, just watching my friends fly into the air just seemed exhilirating. so this one thursday in march, i just couldn't let my chance to pole vault pass and asked my coach to do it. and in no time, i got hooked. plus, i didn't want to just be a distance and middle distance runner cause running all the time kind of got repetitive and boring.

when I started high school, I joined the Outdoor Track team my first season...and saw them vaulting, and I tried it out, because I was curious and interested.

my am. history teacher freshman year also happened to be the girls track coach, and he knew that i was a gymnast (this was before i quit), and he knew that gymnasts can make really good vaulters, so he bugged me all year about it, and i finally gave in and went for it. went 8-6 that year, and now have a pr of 9-6

My next door neighbor put up a pit in the pasture behind our house, it looked like fun and he always had pretty girls hanging round, so I tried it to get the girls to notice me too and got hooked. I was in the sixth grade, somewhere around '71. The pit was two 2x4's buried in the ground for standards, with nails for pegs, a hole to plant the pole and tilled up dirt to land in. The crossbar was taped up bamboo from behind the Dairy Queen and our pole was a lineman fibreglass pole. I guess the same thing that Bruce Caldwell used to create the first training pole. I cleared 5'. I can still remember that thrill I felt when I flew over that piece of bamboo, shoot I can still see the green duct tape that held the cross bar together in the middle. Over 30 years ago, I still get that same feeling when my kids clear a bar. What a silly event we are hooked on!

One word "tremors" the movie, when Kevin Bacon and his co-stars are vaulting between rocks, It made me run out in the backyard with a broom stick and vault to the upper level of my split level backyard

if you don't know the movie here is a link to a picture of the tremors
http://guilds.outpost10f.com/~film/revi ... remors.htm

opalkak wrote:One word "tremors" the movie

I can quote the entire movie...must say, it is one of my favorites.

Pop-quiz......What kind of poles were they using???

big wooden ones

I got into pole vault by my brother in law. He pole vaulted, did 17'3 in high school and 18'9"3/4 in college which was the automatic qualifier for the olympic trials. I took it up after I had quit wrestling, he would take me out to the pit on the weekends and show me how to vault. I started freshman year in high school. Been hooked ever since.