By Steve Holt, Sports Writer
When legendary pole vault coach Don Hood first laid eyes on Katie Eckley, his scouting report was less than favorable.
“I thought she was a little too short and a little too slow,” said Hood, who has coached national champions and world record holders in the pole vault.
That was three years ago, and Eckley was a 5-4 freshman from California with a decorated high school career that included two top-6 finishes at the state meet and a personal best of 12-1.
Hood’s points of reference for what made a successful vaulter, however, were ACU senior national champions Meredith Garner and Jane McNeill, both of whom had muscular builds, speed on the track and either gymnastics or cheerleading in their background.
By the time she was a sophomore in 2003, Eckley was the outdoor national champion. And last weekend, Eckley became the best Division II vaulter ever with a vault of 13-2 1/2, breaking the record Garner set in 2002.
Hood said what Eckley lacks in raw athletic ability she makes up for in another area.
“You can’t measure heart-I think that’s her strongest attribute,” Hood said. “She has a very strong desire to achieve. We’ve got several kids who have a lot more natural ability than she has-speed, strength and athleticism. It’s her determination and level of aspiration that sets her apart and makes her who she is.”
Women’s pole vaulting has just picked up momentum in the last decade and wasn’t added to Division II competition until 1999. Hood said he remembers hearing in the fall of 1998 about the addition of the event in the spring. Then-head coach Wes Kittley asked the women’s team if anyone wanted to try vaulting.
Only three took the intimidating offer, one of whom was freshman Jane McNeill. McNeill, who had been a sprinter on the women’s team and also boasted a history in gymnastics, showed immediate and surprising promise. She barely cleared the provisional height to qualify for indoor nationals, and at the meet started vaulting at 11 feet, which would be a new personal best.
“She made 11, she made 12, then she made 12-3 1/2. She won the national meet, and she had only been training for it for about two months,” Hood remembers.
The next year, McNeill was joined by Harding transfer Meredith Garner, who had developed an interest in the pole vault after attending one of Hood’s skills camps at North Texas State University. Just one year after first picking up a pole, Garner was the outdoor national champion, and two years after that in 2002, Garner picked up an indoor title.
While McNeill and Garner enjoyed frightening collegiate success just months after learning the event, Eckley enjoyed a successful high school vaulting career at West Valley High School in Cottonwood, Calif. Her personal bests improved steadily during high school: 10-3 as a freshman, 11 feet as a sophomore, 11-9 as a junior and 12-1 her senior year.
In 2000 and 2001, Eckley placed sixth and fifth, respectively, at the California State Meet, at which all divisions are combined. Her vault of 12-1 in 2001 set the California North Section CIF pole vault record and was named her high school’s Athlete of the Year that year.
Head coach Jon Murray was the assistant coach when ACU recruited Eckley. He said because of the recent spike in interest in the women’s vault, ACU was blessed to get a vaulter with Eckley’s rZsumZ.
“She came in with some pretty good credentials,” Murray said. “The better athletes are getting into the sport, and they’re learning and getting more experience; so now, if you want to have a vaulter in college, you pretty much have to recruit a vaulter. Katie’s experience out of California has helped her tremendously, and that’s why she’s as successful as she is.”
In Eckley’s case, however, the high school senior contacted the ACU coaches before they could find her. She said she found the list of the top Division II female vaulters online, at the top of which were Meredith Garner and Jane McNeill. She then found out about Hood’s credentials as a pole vault coach, and her decision was sealed.
“It was a big debate for me whether to do track or not, because track is not my whole life by any means at all,” she said. “There are a lot of people who are good, and track is everything to them-it’s not to me. It was going to help pay for college.”
Eckley’s finite view of track and field is seen most clearly in her faith in God. She said her faith helps her remember that “this life is not about external things, but internal things.” She and teammate Val Gorter even prayed with several competitors from other universities at the 2003 NCAA Division II Outdoor National Championships in Edwardsville, Ind., before the start of the event.
“God’s the center of my life, and that’s what I hope people see when they see me compete and when they see me throughout the day,” she said. “It really helps me keep perspective on things, and when I get hurt it’s not the end of it-I have other teammates out there that don’t know God and need to see a good attitude and be encouraged.”
Her coaches certainly notice the centrality of God in her life.
“She’s successful in all parts of her life,” Murray said. “She’s definitely the person I’d bring up on our team to say, ‘This is the person on our team who’s successful on the track, she’s successful in the classroom, she’s successful in her Christian walk.'”
The athletic and spiritual success are hereditary, she said. All three of her siblings have competed in collegiate athletics: her brother, David, was a decorated wrestler at the United States Military Academy at West Point, older sister Laura was the captain of the softball team at Loyola Marymount, and 19-year-old Renee is a track and field athlete at Azusa Pacific. Their father, Dan, was a conference wrestling champion at Cal State-Chico, and has been a minister at their church in California.
“My dad is the first person I call after I compete,” Eckley said. “I get right off the pole vault mat and call him, and they are always at the phone waiting. I grew up in a strong Christian home; I have great siblings. Obviously there is the good and the bad, but overall it’s been a very supportive family.”
Eckley majors in elementary education and has aspirations to teach in a third world country. She said her future in the sport is unclear, as she will have only student teaching remaining to graduate after this semester. Besides her goal to win indoor and outdoor pole vault titles in 2004, another short-term goal includes clearing 14 feet, the qualifying height for the Olympic Trials.
“I think it’d be cool to do for myself, but I think it’d be cool to do for my dad and Coach Hood at the last of my career,” she said.
As Hood put it, Katie Eckley’s heart has vaulted her over many bars of increasing heights. With noble long-term goals to teach children and live in a third-world country, Eckley’s heart may not keep her in track and field, but lead her to other people whom she can touch.
When she’s a 40-year-old missionary in a poor country, Eckley said she will credit pole vaulting with several important lessons she’s learned.
“[It has taught me] to keep things in perspective in life, and also just to know that with God’s strength, I can do anything that’s in his will,” she said. “There’s a lot of hard days that you come out and it’s all mental-you have to choose your attitude for that day, and I think that applies to life.”
