PoleVaultPower.com

I've been coaching at a small high school in Northern Vermont, just north of Burlington, for the past 5 years. The high school has around 500 kids and the community has alot of "old school" ways of thinking when it comes to school budgets. On the positive side, we have an extremely supportive AD, Head Track Coach and Financial Administrator when it comes to Track & Field. Aside from the head coach, the school's administration doesn't understand track & filed all that well, not that I expect them too, especially the pole vault. The point is they are very supportive of "doing things right" when it comes time to update or replace things as long as they have a knowledgeable staff member helping them understand what the "best" and safest solution is.

So, we got approval to get our track resurfaced this July. We're getting 1/2" Plexitrac Lightening. Good surface, but we couldn't afford the better red surface. Not complaining, just stating. Because of this large project, I pushed to get a surfaced concrete pad put in under our existing pole vault pits for a level base and something better than bare dirt for the pits to rest on. In doing this I pushed for a larger surfaced concrete pad to accept a possible larger pit we may purchase in the future when the old ones dies. We currently have min. HS spec pits made from a company that I don't think exists anymore. They are in excellent condition, but I have them on some wood planks to keep them off the bare ground. The ground is not level and slopes down towards the back of the pits. Our setup isn't much to complain about really, but you always want to push for something better.

I went out on my own to get 3 concrete pad installation quotes from local companies. I brought my info to a meeting we had with the AD, head track coach and head maintenance guy to plan out what we wanted to do and make sure we started our track prep work in time for the resurface job. After some questions flew around, the head maintenance guy asked "what if we just bought this "larger pit" now to fit this new oversized concrete pad and sold our smaller existing one?" ( this question arose from me and our head track coach mentioning the increased safety of a larger future pit for the large surfaced concrete pad ). MY AD, head track coach and myself dropped our jaws to the floor, especially after I said it would be around $15,000 for this larger pit. The head maintenance guy asked me to go get some quotes.

To end this story, the school just sent in our PO today for a brand new 1900 series UCS pit, brand new UCS international standards and brand new UCS cast aluminum plant box. I feel like I just won the lottery. Where did we get the money? It was simply lucky timing. The school saved a bunch of money that came in late from energy conservation efforts over the past year. The school's fiscal year ends in July, so the money has to be spent. It's easier to spend money on a large scale than to nickel and dime it out to a hundred little things. It definitely helped that I coached their first boys state champ in pole vault for the past 3 consecutive years.

I'm still in disbelief. All my hard work just paid off huge. The school never had a pole vault coach until I showed up 5 years ago. I'm still just a volunteer for them, but solely committed to them now after this purchase. The hardest part for me is the pool of athletes I get to choose from. It's almost zero. I've got to turn the heat up on the recruiting.

This is a huge step for pole vaulting in the state of Vermont. Maybe I should go into consulting for PV equipment and install

Congrats on a job well done, a great story, with an outstanding ending. Best of luck in the years to come.

Nice job!!!

Congratulations! It shows what can be done when people like yourself give something back to the sport. Your website is great and it seems like you have a really good thing going out there...I have spent a lot of time in Vermont and consider it to be "the Oregon of the East." I too have two major sports I am involved with, rock climbing and pole vaulting. Maybe I should add a pole vaulting section to my climbing website!

www.centraloregonrocks.org

As far as recruiting goes, having multiple state champions (and athletes who continue on to college athletics) is about the best incentive you can have...that and getting your head track coach to realize that sometimes the fastest, tallest, strongest athletes should be pole vaulters as well as sprinters!
Keep up the good work,
Tom

Just goes to show that good Karma is a good thing to have.

Thanks for all the great feedback. Worked out great since I sold our complete existing system for $7,500 to a Vermont school in need of PV equipment, but without the resource to purchase a new complete system. I'm glad a Vermont school stepped up to purchase the system. If a Vermont school didn't step up, I was going to put it on here and it would have probably been gone in a second. If you're curious, here's our existing system I sold for $7,500. I priced it to sell.

http://www.mansfieldathletics.com/vt_pv_system_for_sale.html

Maybe you should talk to my coach.... Our pit is an old non-legal pit that is to small... that is until we slapped a high jump pad on one side and bought a new cover!
-Riley

superpipe wrote:Thanks for all the great feedback. Worked out great since I sold our complete existing system for $7,500 to a Vermont school in need of PV equipment, but without the resource to purchase a new complete system. I'm glad a Vermont school stepped up to purchase the system. If a Vermont school didn't step up, I was going to put it on here and it would have probably been gone in a second. If you're curious, here's our existing system I sold for $7,500. I priced it to sell.

http://www.mansfieldathletics.com/vt_pv_system_for_sale.html

Not that it ever makes sense to ship something as large as a pole vault pit from Vermont to Oregon, but we sure would have been happy to be able to upgrade to what you just sold. (In case it doesn't show in my post, I'm green with envy.)