New York –“Welcome to flying school!”The energy and passion is striking, as coach Tim St. Lawrence of the Hudson Valley Flying Circus Pole Vault Club yells out to one of his several athletes after completing a jump.Situated on the corner of two slim country roads in Warwick, the facility is essentially an old dairy barn with a second floor loft just high enough to pole vault safely — yet St. Lawrence has transformed the place into a pole vault haven.“At first we thought, ‘you’ve got to be kidding me, this isn’t a pole vault camp,’ ” recalled two-time New York state pole vault champion Jordan Yamoah of his thoughts when he and a teammate first saw the building from outside. “But we stuck with it and realized it is just a great atmosphere.” An official Olympic event since 1896, pole vaulting has experienced a recent explosion of success in the mid-Hudson Valley. Three local athletes have won a combined five New York state titles in the last two years. All three have trained at the club, along with multiple other vaulters from local high schools.Yamoah, a 2011 graduate of Arlington High School, won both the indoor and outdoor pole vault state championships in 2011, and teammate Stefan Buechele took both honors for Arlington again in 2012. Red Hook’s Grace Weisbecker also won the girls small school state pole vault title in 2012.“I love it there. I wouldn’t be where I am now without them,” said Weisbecker, a rising senior.   more

Taking advantage of the high speed shooting capabilities of the NEX, these were some of my pole vault attempts… the composites are a bit experimental (which is my way of saying please don’t be too critical of technique as I’m on a learning curve with it  All taken with the Hexanon 200 at around f4.0 

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Paul Babits learned to pole vault the old-fashioned way – from his father, with a bamboo pole, over fences on his family’s farm in Michigan.“When we cleared all the fences, he made a makeshift bar with two-by-fours in cement buckets and then put hay down for a pit,” he says. “We kept raising the bar till it got to be like 10 feet 4 inches and it hurt when you went down.”Nonetheless, pole vaulting became Babits’ passion, one that earned him a Michigan high school state championship, a scholarship to college and two trips to the U.S. Olympic Trials.Now the 51-year-old Fort Wayne man owns a world record in pole vaulting’s master’s division – and one of a handful of private facilities in the nation devoted to teaching the skills of a largely unheralded sport.  As pole vaulting enters the spotlight during this year’s Summer Olympics in London, Babits expects a new crop of young potential vaulters.“Why wouldn’t they want to pole vault? It’s a riot,” he said last week between shouting directions to nine male and female students at his Vault High Athletics training facility tucked into the woods by his home along Pion Road.  “It’s like flying. There’s no other feeling like it,” he says. “When you go up in the air, you fly. No other sport lets you do that.”Vault High’s quarters, in a cavernous pole barn, feature 6,400 square feet of floor space and a 35-foot-high ceiling. Athletes use two 140-foot runways with pit areas and other equipment to hone their skills   more

VERMILLION, S.D. (KTIV) -As the Olympics inch closer, a Siouxland coach will represent the United States in London. And, this coach hopes to vault his way to a medal.He’s been close before.Derek Miles has had his fair share of heartbreak in the pole vault in the Olympics.Finishing seventh in the 2004 Athens games and just missing bronze in 2008, the University of South Dakota assistant track coach and former Coyote star, is taking a different approach this time around.Derek Miles, said, “Let’s just take the whole thing in and see what you have and do the best you can.”The change of heart from the veteran was brought on by a nagging Achilles injury.”It’s been an interesting year, in terms of training, my base is all there, I’ve been training hard all year it’s just been the last, probably two months I’ve has a little bit of this nagging, Achilles problem and then it gradually got worse, so we’re at a spot two weeks before the trials, I couldn’t even run down the runway.”Miles has been resting it, going 10 straight days of constant therapy.”From that perspective, it’s feeling a little bit better, but on the other end, I haven’t been able to train like I’d like too.”Training, that he hopes to do in Arkansas before he “vaults” across the Atlantic to London.  more

Track and field has never had the highest priority in football-hungry West Texas, but there are a few oases for fans of the sport.One such oasis is the home of pole vaulting coach Willie Ruiz, who has coached local athletes to district, regional and even a state championship right in his own backyard.Literally.”I have an old pole-vault kit that I bought for my son back in 1999,” Ruiz said. “I built a track and welded some standards (which hold the bar up). When my son started vaulting higher, I had to do something, so I went out and bought some factory-made standards.”Ruiz began pole vaulting in high school in Andrews, but his interest in the sport goes back further than that.”When I was a kid, I used to visit my grandma. And with my cousins, we would traverse some mountain creeks, and we would be carrying 15-foot bamboo sticks, and they were for jumping over springs in the creeks,” Ruiz said. “Later on in junior high, I found out they actually had a sport for it, and I have been vaulting ever since.”Though Ruiz was a solid vaulter in high school, injuries prevented him from advancing to state.  more

TAMPA- Lacy Janson stood at the US Airways check-in counter at Tampa International Airport Wednesday and patiently watched the circus play out in front of her. The two blue bags with USA written in red on the side were no problem and could easily be checked through to London. The carry-on backpack, emblazoned with lettering that said USA Track and Field, did not raise an eyebrow.But that 15-foot canvas bag resting on the floor behind Janson quickly became a source of confusion and consternation.The agent attempting to check in Janson quickly conferred with a co-worker. Soon, a third agent joined the meeting. Then a fourth, this one armed with a tape measure.Qualifying for the 2012 London Summer Olympics in pole vaulting was difficult for Janson. But getting her equipment to the games seems almost as challenging.”It happens almost every time,” said Janson, who patiently explained to each of the agents that she would not book a flight without making certain the tools of her trade could also make the trip. “I come to expect something and if something does come up … it’s ‘been there, done that.”There seems to be always someone who looks at the bag and insists that it will never fit on the plane.”Inside the unwieldy 15-foot bag that weighs 45 to 50 pounds were eight vaulting poles, paraphernalia that helped send the 29-year-old Cardinal Mooney High graduate soaring past the 15-foot mark and landing her on the U.S. Olympic team.   more