Event PR Comparisons

[kmonty51]

Has anyone done some kind of study comparing the difficulty of PR'ing in high school pole vault versus other events? I coach a 9th grade vaulter that finished his season with the most varsity points of any other "rookie" on the team (regardless of grade) including winning a city championship and placing at our conference meet, but was not given our annual "Rookie of the Year" award because the other kid, a 1600/3200 runner who occasionally ran in a 4 x 400 or 800, PR'd more times. When I tried to explain that PR'ing by six inches in pole vault is much more difficult than improving by .01 seconds in a 1600 or 3200 meter run (I'm a former cross-country runner and coach, so think I have some knowledge of distance running), the head coach laughed and sarcastically said, "Yeah! Well let me know when you figure out the math on that one!" .

So...has anyone ever tried to do some sort of event PR comparison in terms of difficulty? If so, please post it, because I'd love to print it and stick it where the sun don't shine upon our head coach!

[VaultPurple]

Well if you want to do the "math". In the decathlon, 6 inches in the vault is Thea same as 7.5 seconds in the 1500...

[kmonty51]

Decathlon points..not a bad idea! Any other thoughts out there? I'm kinda P.O.'d about this.

[VaultPurple]

Decathlon points..not a bad idea! Any other thoughts out there? I'm kinda P.O.'d about this.

Besides that, not really...

Its the way the world works. You will hardly ever see a pole vaulter as a meet MVP or something like that unless he breaks some kind of record (and the chance is still slim) solely because he only does one event. And some people will just never let them live that down, even if their 10 points in one event is better than the 9 someone got from 2 or three events. Also about 99% of college coaches are the cross country coach too and know nothing about vaulting so they are biased.

[kmonty51]

Purple speaks...! You are very right, and an old codger like me should remember some things just are what they are. Still...I'm P.O.'d!

[IAmTheWalrus]

Check these out too

http://www.iaaf.org/mm/Document/Competi ... _23299.pdf

[VaultPurple]

Check these out too

http://www.iaaf.org/mm/Document/Competi ... _23299.pdf

Very interesting list. According to the list the men's world record of 6.15m would be equal to a women's jump of 5.12m

And the highest scoring world record is the men's 100m of 9.59 seconds. For the men's pole vault to equal that someone would need to jump 6.34m and a woman about 5.31m.

So I guess the record of all records for a pole vaulter could be 6.35m meaning that your record is better than all the other track and field records.. according to the IAAF.

[kmonty51]

Thank you. These are helpful posts.