Amanda Haines Article

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AC's Haines raises the bar

After becoming the Bulldogs' first national indoor track champion, Adrian High graduate Amanda Haines gets ready for a follow-up to last year's All-American outdoor season.

By Sean Trapp

Daily Telegram Assistant Sports Editor


Telegram photo by Deloris Clark Osborne -- Adrian College sophomore Amanda Haines recently broke the NCAA Division III indoor women's championship meet pole vault record with a jump of 12 feet, 11 inches. Haines became the first national champion for the Bulldogs in track and field.

ADRIAN -- As the pole vault event has progressed in women's track and field, Amanda Haines has progressed as an athlete.

Haines, a sophomore at Adrian College and a 2002 Adrian High graduate, started vaulting in 1998 as an eighth grader, the same year the Michigan High School Athletic Association made girls vaulting an official event.

"I just knew I wanted to do it from the second I picked it up," Haines said. "I was OK at it, I wasn't the best in the world, but I could do it and I had a feel for it. I could work out problems with my technique. If a coach says 'do this' and you can do it, then you're on your way to being good with something."

At that point, she had already been involved with several activities that helped her develop as an athlete, including swimming, gymnastics and dance, such as ballet, acrobatics and baton.

Haines' father, Forrest, is a former AC track coach and has coached her since she told him she wanted to focus on vaulting.

"The winter before freshman track season (in high school), I started to get into it and that was pretty tough because you can't just go do it, it takes a lot of technique work," Haines said. "I had to just fly into the pit for a while as a I was learning it."

She had an immediate impact at the high school level with team points for the Maples and has excelled in college. She was an All-American her freshman season and won a national championship this year, as a sophomore.

Her vault of 12 feet, 11 inches at the Division III Women's Indoor Track and Field Championships set a new meet record, one of four broken at this year's meet, which was in Whitewater, Wis., on March 12-13.

Haines has broken the school record multiple times, and now has it moved up to 12-11 3/4.

"I think there's a handful of records she has the potential to break in running and field events," AC track and field coach Riki Carson said. "Her main focus is pole vault, but she's fast enough and good enough that she might get some records accidentally."

Carson was a multi-sport track and field athlete and is also an Adrian High product. Forrest Haines was her coach when she competed for AC and Amanda now stars in several events for the Bulldogs -- not just the pole vault.

Currently, Haines is also tied for the school record in the 100-meter dash. Her official time of 12.5 seconds (hand-held timer) matches Jennifer Smith's 1991 record. She is also a member of the school's 4x100-meter relay team, which has finished at 52.2, just behind the school record set in 1995 at 51.1.

Overall, Haines participates in seven events at most meets.

Aside from the pole vault, she does the long jump, high jump and triple jump, the 100- and 200-meter sprints, the relay and may soon compete in hurdles events, which she has just started working on this season.

"In a lot of the events, the techniques intertwine, they go together," Haines said. "Each has a slight change, obviously going over a bar and jumping into a sand pit is a little different, but the same technique will get you there."

Carson said it's common for athletes on her teams, she coaches the boys also, to participate in numerous events, both running and field activities.

"Especially in colleges with smaller teams, sometimes you have to mix it up," she said. "When you start advancing in one event, you're going to start advancing in another, actually skills in one event can be very complementary of other events."

Haines was a successful athlete in high school, along with twin-sister Traci, her only sibling, but her first major accomplishment that kept pushing her to work hard came between high school and college.

She competed in the 2002 Junior Olympics National Championships at Omaha, Neb., and placed sixth in the Young Women's division (17-18).

"That put things in perspective," she said. "I took sixth and it wasn't expected. I went in and placed real well and as I kept vaulting, people kept dropping out and before I knew it, if I could make 11-6, I'd be in the rankings and I made that. It was my PR (personal record) at the time.

"Taking sixth at the Junior Olympics makes you feel like you're on your way to somewhere."

She had to win qualifying events to make the meet, which had more than 7,000 athletes in the various events and divisions, but after finishing so well, it encouraged her to see how good she could be.

Carson is still waiting to see just how good that is.

"We've seen a ton of improvement from her already," Carson said. "At one point her PR was maybe 10 feet, then it was 11, then 12 and now it's 13 feet (12-11 3/4).

"She continues to improve tremendously and has just come leaps and bounds since she started."

Haines, whose academic major is interior design, said she never really put much thought into college while in high school.

"I never looked at any colleges, I had a lot of mail come to me, but I never even thought about where I was going to go to college until my senior year," she said. "School was ending and I had something going. I had a coach and a place to vault, which was here. I've always practiced here.

"When I did choose it, it seemed like a logical choice. I needed somewhere to go and they didn't not have anything I needed here."

Haines said she's always trying to improve something with her technique, even if it's a very basic adjustment.

She's constantly trying to improve and finds a good motivation is striving to be her best. She'd love to be an Olympian, but her goal is to have a perfect vaulting form and see what comes with it.

"It's very exciting," Carson said. "I think it's very exciting for her and it's very exciting for the school. We've had All-Americans in the past, but she's our first national champion.

"Her goal is to the best and she's good enough that she keeps reaching new heights."