Melanie Buczko (Bucknell) near end of her career

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http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07119/781227-134.stm

Sunday North: Butler grad near end of her vaulting career

Sunday, April 29, 2007

By Rich Emert, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Melanie Buczko's athletic career is coming to a close, which is why there was a hint of urgency in her voice when she talked about what she would like to accomplish.

Buczko, a senior at Bucknell University, is a member of the women's track team. She has set a number of school records in the pole vault. She placed first last weekend at the Bucknell Team Challenge, setting a stadium women's record with a height of 12 feet, 7 1/2 inches.

That height qualified her for the NCAA regionals and the ECAC meet, but Buczko isn't satisfied.

"I've been trying some new things, changing my approach to what I'm doing and I haven't been able to go as high as I think I can," said Buczko, a Butler Area High School graduate. "So, it's been a little frustrating for me right now."

It isn't easy to change technique in any track event. It is especially hard in the pole vault, where muscles get locked into doing things a certain way.

"It's like you have to reprogram everything that you've learned," she said. "But I'm confident that I'll get it."

As a sophomore, Buczko cleared an impressive 13-5 1/2 indoors at the NYU FasTimes Invitational. She also competed at the NCAA indoor championships that year and tied for 14th with a height of 13-1 1/2.

She won the pole vault event five times during the outdoors season last year. Included in those wins was a victory at the Patriot League championships where she went 12-11 1/2 and broke her own meet record.

Buczko also went 13-1 1/2 to take fifth place in the championship division at the Penn Relays last year at Franklin Field in Philadelphia. She was headed for the Penn Relays again this past week.

"Hopefully, I'll get back to where I was as a sophomore and go a little higher," she said. "This is my last year, so I'd like to go to the NCAA championships and, hopefully, do well there."

She had thought about joining a track club and staying with the pole vault for another year or two. That was before she landed a job as a civil engineer with a company in Philadelphia. She will start in July.

"I've been doing this [pole vaulting] since eighth grade. That's a lot of wear and tear on the body," she said. "So, this is going to be it for me."

An outstanding athlete in high school, Buczko got into the pole vault as an eighth grader because of her background as a gymnast.

"In gymnastics, you have to have that body awareness in the air and the same thing is true in the pole vault," she said. "I wasn't very good at it right away, but I learned to like it and got better as I went along."

She won the WPIAL Class AAA pole vault title as a senior and placed second at the PIAA championships. Buczko also finished fourth in the 100-meter hurdles at the WPIAL championships.

Buczko has continued to hurdle in college and last year ran the fifth-fastest 100-meter hurdles time in Bucknell history with a time of 14.57 seconds at the Bucknell Classic.

"I just enjoy doing the hurdles. It's a nice break from the pole vault," she said. "Mostly, I do it to help us get points in the smaller meets."

Coming out of high school, Buczko had a number of schools interested in her for track. She was turned on to Bucknell by one of her high school coaches. Once she visited the campus in Lewisburg, she was sold.

"It had a strong engineering program, which is what I was after, and I liked the fact the classes were not big and that you got a lot of one-on-one attention," she said. "Plus, I liked the coaches. It was just a perfect fit."