Stuczynski - from nowhere to the cusp of the Olympics

[rainbowgirl28]

Pictures if you click the link

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/sport ... lt.html?hp

From Out of Nowhere, a Vaulter Is on Cusp of the Olympics

James Rajotte for The New York Times
Outdoors, Jenn Stuczynski’s runway is carved into a field of weeds in Western New York. Indoors, she trains in a Quonset hut built by her coach, Rick Suhr.

By LYNN ZINSER
Published: June 29, 2008
CHURCHVILLE, N.Y. — As Jenn Stuczynski stood on her pole-vault runway during a recent practice, contemplating a bar set two and a half inches under world-record height, her eyes wandered for a second to a tractor spraying pesticide in the cornfield next door.



James Rajotte for The New York Times
Jenn Stuczynski, who began pole-vaulting in 2004, is the United States record-holder.
The scene had long been familiar to her, the humble rural setting of her not-so-humble Olympic dream: there is the Quonset hut her coach built as an indoor training facility, its corrugated metal walls all but helpless in keeping out the Western New York winter; the outdoor runway cut through a field of tall weeds, sprinkled with daisies and buttercups.

It is a strange sight among the rolling farmland and the new houses that mark suburban Rochester’s slow encroachment. But for Stuczynski, the best female pole-vaulter in the United States, this is home.

On this day, though, the tractor prompted her to laugh.

“If the wind wasn’t blowing that way, we’d all be breathing pesticide right now,” she said.

Stuczynski was only days away from leaving for the United States Olympic track and field trials in Eugene, Ore., where she hopes to continue a remarkable ascent in this event. It was only four years ago that her coach watched her in a basketball game and persuaded her to pick up a pole for the first time.

Now, at 26, Stuczynski holds the American record, clearing 16 feet ¾ inches at the Adidas Track Classic in May. Only one woman in the world has vaulted higher: Yelena Isinbayeva of Russia, at 16-5 1/4. The qualifying round at the United States trials is Wednesday, with the finals next Sunday afternoon.

“Going into this thing she had so much stacked against her,” Stuczynski’s coach, Rick Suhr, said. “She’s not a gymnast. She has no gymnastics background. She has an unproven coach. She doesn’t come from a pole-vault area.

“This is very geographic. It’s like surfing. You’re not going to find a great surfer in Buffalo, N.Y. That’s what makes Jenn such a fascinating story. How many laws of pole-vaulting can you break and still jump high?”

Though Stuczynski has jumped eight and a half inches higher than her nearest American competitor, the event is notoriously unpredictable. In the 2000 trials, the men’s American record-holder, Jeff Hartwig, failed to clear a height and was knocked out in the qualifying round.

She tried vaulting for the first time in 2004, after Suhr saw her play basketball at Roberts Wesleyan College, where he was an assistant track coach and Stuczynski played basketball and spent a few seasons on the track team. She was a 6-foot guard/forward who would finish with a university-record 1,819 points. Her track events ranged from the 100-meter hurdles to the javelin, and she set several team records, but her talent in the pole vault was a revelation.

At the 2005 championships, she set three personal records and won. She was so focused on the details of her jumps, she did not realize it when all the other jumpers had missed for the last time.

Around her, she got the first taste of the scene she had splashed into, hearing other coaches and athletes say her victory was a fluke.

“I was like, ‘I’m standing right here; don’t they see me?’ ” Stuczynski said. “It took me a long time to get used to the critics, the people on the runway. One girl said, ‘14-3, it’s not like that’s a high height.’ Rick just said, ‘We’ll show ’em.’ That’s all he said.”

Stuczynski and Suhr have become used to bucking the conventions of pole-vaulting and they know they make an unlikely pair in an unlikely story.

Suhr had started it all by approaching Stuczynski out of the blue, suggesting that she try an event she had never contemplated. He had coached several vaulters, including three high schoolers who at one time led the nation. He had developed what he thought was a good coaching system, built the Quonset hut in his backyard for indoor vaulting and went looking for an athlete to coach long term.

He had been impressed with Stuczynski’s toughness, not to mention her athleticism and long legs, while watching her play basketball. “It was weird,” Stuczynski said. “I trusted him right away. That’s not usually my M.O. I remember I told my parents and they were like, ‘Yeah, right.’

“I remember watching it and it looked different. It was a little scary. I remember all the athletes he had were short. I was about a foot taller than everyone else. I said, ‘I don’t think I’m built for this.’ He said, ‘No, you’ll be fine.’ I was definitely intimidated at first.”

Stuczynski had grown up in Fredonia, N.Y., participating in golf, softball and soccer as well as basketball and track, winning a state title in the pentathlon. However, Suhr said, most vaulters have a background in gymnastics because they have to feel comfortable in the air.

Soon, Stuczynski was flying higher than either of them could have imagined. At practice last week, she was clearing 16-2 ¾, close to Isinbayeva’s world record. She was clearing the bar, but knocking it off with her hands on the way down, a matter of technique Suhr then lectured her about while showing her the jump on his video camera.

They were sitting next to each other in lawn chairs, immersed in the technique of pole-vaulting, the only noise outside their conversation being the hum of the tractor and a chorus of birds. It is far preferable to their winter workouts in the Quonset hut, when Suhr often has to plow his way into the backyard and shovel snow from the door while Stuczynski brushes snow off her poles and stands in front of two small heaters to stay warm.

“I grew up here,” Stuczynski said, shrugging. “I’m used to it.”

She laughs when describing the scene. She could have moved when her success earned her contracts with Adidas and Nutrilite two years ago — ending the days when Suhr helped finance her by taking a second mortgage on his house — but she does not long for a cushier setting. She lives upstairs in Suhr’s house, with her dog, Tundra, a Great Pyrenees. Despite the challenges of finding massage therapists and physiotherapists — she drives two hours into Canada to visit someone familiar with track and field athletes — she said she would not change anything.

“I never would move unless Rick moves,” she said. “I’m happy where I am. I love this area. Even when I was growing up, when I was going to be a school psychologist or whatever, I wasn’t going to move. I like Western New York.”

It is best, though, when the wind blows the right way.

[rainbowgirl28]

http://www.nbcolympics.com/wgrz/news/newsid=156114.html

The out-of-the-blue athlete
By Scott Brown
Posted Friday, July 25, 2008 0:20 PM ET
Four years ago, Jenn Stuczynski had never picked up a pole.


Jenn Stuczynski of the US competes looks at the wind to win the women pole vault event at 4,90m, May 18, 2008 during the Adidas Track Classic at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California.
"The sport I probably liked best was softball," says Jenn.

Former college basketball player Jenn Stuczynski has emerged as the top women's pole vaulter in America and is one of only three women ever to clear 16 feet in the event.
She had never attempted a jump.

"I was like, you want me to run and put this pole in the box and jump?"

She didn't even like the sport.

"I never watched it," says Jenn.

Today, four years later, Jenn Stuczynski holds the American record for women and finished second in this year's World Indoor Championships.

She's one of America's best hopes for a medal at the summer Olympics. She's also the best western New York athlete that no one knows.

Growing up in Fredonia, NY, Jenn was always an exceptional athlete. In high school she won the state championship in the pentathlon, which consists of five track and field events, but does not include the pole vault.

In college Jenn was a star basketball player at Roberts Weslyan College in Rochester, winning national player of the year honors as a senior. That spring, four years ago, Jenn was playing in a pickup basketball game with members of the men's team when her life, and the future of women's pole vaulting in the U.S. changed forever. She was spotted by the school's track coach Rick Suhr. "I knew right away this might be the kind of attitude and toughness I had been looking for," remembers Suhr.

"He said you've been good at a lot of things but I think you could be great at pole vault," says Jenn. "It was kind of odd, like a pole vaulter. Who wants to be a pole vaulter when they're a senior in college? But it was weird, I had a trust in him already."

That trust was rewarded very quickly. Jenn's athletic ability, combined with her great drive and Suhr's coaching had her reaching new heights on a regular basis.

"I'd say after seven or eight months, I started to figure things out just a little bit," says Jenn.

"She used to ask me almost every day, ‘can I be really good at this?' I'd say I don't know yet, I need to see more," say Suhr. "In December, I pretty much knew she could be a big timer. I knew we were on to something really good."

Maybe something even better than really good. Ten months after first picking up a pole, Jenn stucZynski won the American Indoor Championship. "The only parallel I can draw," says Suhr, "is you or me picking up a golf club tomorrow, and we've never golfed, and 10 months later we beat Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and win the Masters."

Suddenly Jenn was the golden girl of women's pole vaulting. But she was also still a student, going for her master's in child psychology. To help support herself she would commute from where she trained near Rochester to her parents' food store in Fredonia. "In the morning, I'd start the coffee, count the papers, sweep, whatever dirty job," says Jenn.

Then at the end of 2005, about a year and a half after she started vaulting, Jenn came to a crossroads: She would have to choose between education and competition. "I can't do my masters and I can't pole vault. I can't give those things half and half. I have to give 100 percent to something, and that's when I dropped out of the master's program."

"She called us to say she thought she was going to take some time off from school to make a living pole vaulting," remembers her father Mark. "We both hit our knees crying because we never thought it would be a possibility." And it almost wasn't. Jenn still didn't have an endorsement contract and wasn't making any money. That's when her coach stepped up.

"I remember telling her that I was going to refinance my home to get enough money to buy enough time for her to keep training," says Suhr.

A few months later, Jenn signed an endorsement contract with Adidas and her financial worries were over. Since then she's become a superstar. Last year she became just the second woman in history to clear 16 feet. She's won a total of five U.S. Championships and has competed throughout Europe.

Now the young girl who grew up in Fredonia, NY, never watching the pole vault, has her sights set on Beijing.

[gymnastsrock]

There are so many great parts to the second interview, but my favorite would have to be, "It was kind of odd, like a pole vaulter. Who wants to be a pole vaulter when they're a senior in college?"

[rainbowgirl28]

http://www.rnews.com/Sports/TopSports_2 ... category=3

Stuczynski on Road to Beijing
by Tim Irving
photo by Tim Irving
Published Jul 28, 2008
You can't just pick up a sport and master it at the Olympic level in a year. Unless your name is Jenn Stuczynski.

Stuczynski's journey started when Roberts Wesleyan basketball coach Chris Williams heard another coach talking about an athlete at Fredonia High School, who did everything, from hoops to golf to soccer goal keeping, and excelled at all of them.

At Roberts Stuczynski blossomed into a basketball and track All-American, demonstrating a determination to carry her athletic career beyond college, but unsure how to go about it.

Then, she met Rick Suhr. The Spencerport grad had a pole vault academy focusing on the women's event.

Just a year later, Stuczynski won the U.S. Indoor Nationals and her life, as she knew it, was over.

Said Suhr, "We used to drive to an hour to the meet in the morning of, get out and jump. That's what we did locally here in Rochester. Now you come in four days early, you have press conferences, a lot of media coverage and a tremendous amount of pressure and anxiety builds in those three-four days before the meet."

Last August, Stuczynski suffered an Achilles tendon injury and all that momentum came to a grinding halt.

"I would say it was a 50-50 decision if we were just gonna the plug on 2008," said Suhr. "It was that close, that critical. Jenn started to heal, that helped."

"We've been very careful with our training," said Stuczynsk. "doing a lot of physio-treatments and working with massage therapists to get back."

Working out of a specially made facility in Riga, Stuczynski has broken her American outdoor record twice. Most recently at the Olympic trials, she set her sights on Yelena Isenbaeva, the world record holder.

" think about it and I'm training for it," said Jenn. "There's nothing in my training that has wavered at all. We're going for the gold, but there's always stuff that you have to go through, stuff you have to overcome."

"She's always been an athlete that works overtime when it comes to perfecting her skills and the sacrifices she's made," says her father Mark Stuczynski. "I think that's what made us more nervous. Knowing how much she's sacrificed, how much she's done to get to the point where she's at. To see her fail would have been disappointing for her and we're anxious to see her make it."

[rainbowgirl28]

http://www.observertoday.com/page/conte ... l?nav=5010

Stuczynski finds her calling in pole vaulting
‘It's been an amazing ride’

By DAVE IBACH
POSTED: July 27, 2008 Save | Print | Email | Read comments | Post a comment
Article Photos

AP Photo
Jennifer Stuczynski looks back as she clears the bar to win the women's pole vault final at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in Eugene, Ore., Sunday, July 6, 2008.

Editor's Note: This is the second of a three-part series on Fredonia's Olympian Jenn Stuczynski. The following story was written June 1, 2007.

Jenn Stuczynski recalls her low-key upbringing with great fondness. She was raised in a small town, attended a college that was nothing more than a blip on the national sports radar screen and to this day trains in her coach's backyard barn.

But over the past three years, Stuczynski has realized a life that's far more physically and mentally demanding than the one she had growing up in Fredonia or at NAIA Roberts Wesleyan. When you're the best in the country at your craft, those challenges come with the territory. They're included in a long line of athletic trials that Stuczynski has met head-on.

Stuczynski, the United States' top women's pole vaulter, has stepped into an unfamiliar world most couldn't imagine. Just in the past month, she's broken the much-sought-after American record and had her photo appear in Sports Illustrated. This year she's won the national indoor championship a second time, took first place in both the Tyson Invitational and Pole Vault Summit and was second at New York's famed Millrose Games. With the continued success and media exposure, Stuczynski, 25, has become a star prodigy in the world of track and field.

"I look back and remember being stuck in Canada, scrounging for change for the toll booth," the Adidas-sponsored Stuczynski said in a recent telephone interview. "It's just weird to think about that sometimes."

In retrospect, it seems as though the search for a spare coin might have been a challenge compared to the success Stuczynski has enjoyed in her athletic life. In 2000, her senior year at Fredonia High School, Stuczynski won the OBSERVER Girls Basketball Player of the Year award and that spring went on to win the state pentathlon title. At Roberts Wesleyan, she is the school's all-time leading women's basketball scorer and holds four school records in individual track events and two as a member of relay teams.

"After that pentathlon I knew I was done running any kind of distance," Stuczynski said. "I knew I was never going to go anywhere with that. I played basketball, but wasn't big and didn't have the frame that basketball players have. I wanted to look for an education and eventually find a job."

During her senior year at Roberts, pole vault coach Rick Suhr convinced Stuczynski to give the sport a try. Then Stuczynski's life changed.

Suhr - a respected Eastern European-style vault coach in track and field circles who also coaches high school record holder Mary Saxer of Lancaster and Tiffany Maskulinski of Iroquois - took Stuczynski under his wing and she flourished.

In 2005, her first year competing, Stuczynski won five meets, including a shocking first-place finish at the national indoor championships that rapidly changed the landscape in women's pole vault.

"On some days I get so fixated on getting the world record or more importantly get her to jump as high as she can," the Rochester-based Suhr said. "Sometimes I'll take a step back and look at what accomplishments she's done. No one has ever gone so high so fast. It's amazing."

In 2006, Stuczynski won seven meets, including the USA outdoor championship, and took part in her first European tour. She became the top-ranked vaulter in the country and No. 6 in the world.

Stuczynski's rapid three-year ascension in the pole vault makes Suhr think she still has the ability to improve exponentially.

"The best analogy I could ever come up with is a pitcher that can throw 100 miles per hour," Suhr explained. "If they can control the speed and what they're doing, there will never be anybody better. That's where Jenn's at. She's a prodigy and the potential is starting to come through.

"She has the third best [height] ever [reached] in pole vault. America's a big place and she's got the record. She just needs to keep progressing. ... It's been an amazing ride."

Stuczynski broke 2000 Olympic gold medalist Stacy Dragila's three-year-old American record on May 20 in Carson, Calif. at the Adidas Track Classic, vaulting 15 feet, 10 1/2 inches, eclipsing the old mark by a half-inch.

"Once I woke up and started warming up for the meet, my legs were tired and I didn't feel good," Stuczynski recalled. "Things were lining up for me to not have a good day. I was off in warmups, but the more I jumped, I slowly started bringing it back. Looking back on it, [the record] was rather unexpected just because of the way I felt."

Stuczynski has said in the past that breaking the American record was one of her biggest goals. Now she has her sights set on 16 feet.

"No woman has ever jumped that height in the U.S.," she said. "It's a height that's recognized. There's one goal down and there's a lot more to go. By no means does [the record] make me relax. It just adds to my drive."

It's that kind of competitive nature that sets Stuczynski apart from many athletes, according to Suhr.

"Probably the best comment that I get about Jenn is her competitiveness, her mental toughness," he said. "She just wants to win whether she's vaulting in bad conditions, planting a pole where she's never been, it doesn't matter. She's mentally tough. ... In the end, when all things are equal, she's just a tough competitor and there's no substitute for it."

Stuczynski, who said she makes it back home to Fredonia about once a month, will participate in the Reebok Games in New York today. The event is a Grand Prix meet, one of the three major annual meets in the U.S. along with the Adidas and the U.S. Nationals.

Barring injury, Stuczynski will travel to Eugene, Ore. next June to participate in a two-day Olympic qualifier. The top three vaulters will represent the U.S. in the 2008 Beijing Games. Stuczynski said that when she's participating in well-publicized events, especially those overseas, she feels as though she's representing more than just herself, but her country and hometown.

"You do have a sense of that because they list you by your country," Stuczynski said. "That's how they separate you. I remember my mom calling me and saying, 'You're listed as U.S.A.!' It was pretty awesome."