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I'm sure you guys have talked about this many times, but I just wnted to know if any other people have noticed a stark decrease in the number of vaulters recently. At my meet today, only 3 girls and 3 boys participated in pole vault and all of them were from my school. This has happened various times this year and is really discouraging. The first year the NFHS changed the requirements for the pits, there was only one school in my class that had legal pits. Its now been 2 or 3 year since that change and there are only 3 schools that have legal pits. So many schools got rid of poel vault because they were unqilling to pay for the mats. It's a shame to watch the sport dying in my state and class. Anyone else experiencing a lack of vaulters?

we are experiencing a serious lack of vaulters in competition, but we have a very strong program at my school.

Im seeing a big time increase here. Especially in the heights younger vaulters are jumping and how many of them are jumping that high.

I've seen nothing but increase down here in Florida...I've seen more and more vaulters at meets...and were getting higher too...my sophomre year 11 ft won state and i took 3rd w 10'6....last year 12'6 won and 11 was 3rd and 5th...:-)

It all depends on the region you're in and how much money the school systems have - or should I say, how much money the school systems allocate to the athletic department... and then how much of that money trickles down to T & F

competition is seemingly decreasing in the conference
my school is in, in north jersey. i would say only about
half of our meets actually end up with vaulters from
more than one school...

We've seen a decrease in central part of michigan as well. Our school still has very strong numbers. Thats partly due to the fact that we have a vault coach for our middle school program as well as at the high school level.

I stepped in as a replacement and officiated at the XO Invite here at Hayward Field, Eugene Oregon last weekend and we had 32 men vaulting in one pit at the meet and 20+ women on the other pit so I would say participation is up in Oregon.

we were lucky that our pits were already big enough. we'd gotten new pits several years earlier when (or so i hear) someone arsoned our pit...so we got insurance money, and they bought really big pits.
i can't imagine we'd have been able to purchase new pits when that rule changed...

yeah thats gotta suck. our school purchased the new
pits as the rule changed. actually...we re-did the whole
facility. new track and everything to boot. from what
i'm told, they use to vault in one of the parking lots...
no runway...just a dugout whole they dropped the box
in and tossed the mats down...glad i'm there now with
all the new stuff

This is very true. When i used to watch my sisters track meets there were a lot of vaulters, but now that I vault there's only been 3 out of 8 teams with vaulters and 2 of the teams only had 1 vaulter.

I haven't noticed any changes, around St. Louis, missouri I think the amount of vaulters are increasing.