More Stubborn than Gravity — Finding a passion

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Finding a passion

This is the fifth blog I have created. Each one I made I managed to post a few random things, and then forget the password or lose interest and let its existence become useless. I hope this blog will change that track record. 

I’ll start by giving a bit of background about myself. My name is Sandi, I was born in the great state of Illinois and my family moved to South Carolina, where I grew up, when I was three. My love for track and field started at a young age. It runs in my blood. My parents both ran for Western Illinois University, and had me on a team at the age of seven. I was at my oldest sister’s soccer game when my mom saw me hold out a shiny quarter to a little boy, who took the treasure and agreed to race me around the track. That boy’s mom happened to be sitting next to mine, and they both laughed as I dusted him to the finish line. She informed my mom about a local track club for kids my age, and that was it. I became a “trackie”.

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My birthday happens to land in July, the heat of summer track season. Most kids grow up having birthday parties at Chuck-E-Cheese or the pool…not me! My birthday parties took place in a boiling hot tent at track meets, with my teammates all there to help devour the melting ice cream cake that my wonderful mom would always bring.

Speaking of my mother, she is a wonderful, sweet woman. As my dad puts it, she “feeds the world”. She would bring coolers full of all kinds of goodies to each track meet. Turkey sandwiches on “that good potato bread stuff that you get from the white people grocery store,” (words of my fellow teammates, most of whom were of the opposite skin tone of myself – AKA not glowing, pale white with a layer of red sun burn.) She would layer the inside of that cooler with amazing, delicious foods that taste like heaven to the tongue of a parched little kid after a long weekend at the track.

I competed in any event that my coaches or mom (who became my high school track coach) threw me in. I was best at the 100-meter hurdles and the pole vault. I started to run hurdles in 6th grade, but didn’t begin to vault until I started high school.

I guess Coach Wyatt was right – the little, scrawny thing running in the hurdles would turn out to be a good vaulter, and I am so glad he pointed it out to my dad when he saw me at a meet. That was the summer after 8th grade, the first time I ever laid my hands on a pole vault pole. I then spent my high school career focusing on the pole vault and 100 meter hurdles (but mostly the vault). My parents would cart me around the country to go to various pole vault camps and competitions. I trained with Rusty Shealy, who coaches out of South Carolina and is well known on the east coast. Coach Shealy is awesome. He spent my high school years coaching at different facilities, but now has a vault pit set up in the woods in his backyard, and holds weekly lessons and summer camps that I love to go back to and help with. Without Shealy, I wouldn’t be where I am today, at the University of Arkansas vaulting, holding a solid place as one of the top American vaulters.

Arkansas didn’t find me easily, though. I spent my freshman and sophomore years of college at UNC Chapel Hill, competing as a Tar Heel. I ended up transferring to Arkansas after the completion of my sophomore year, and that is a decision I will never regret making. Don’t get me wrong… I absolutely loved UNC. The campus is so lush, and the light blue that surrounds the old trees is relaxing and beautiful. I had a great freshman year on the track, but struggled academically. I jumped 4.30m as a freshman (or for Americans, about 14 feet 1 inch.) Jumping that as a freshman is impressive, and I knew I had more in me, but by sophomore year I simply wasn’t improving. To this day I still cannot pinpoint one specific reason why I wanted to leave, it was just a combination of many small things, but I knew something had to change. Most people fear big changes in life, but I am the type of person who embraces it. I like to move and start over, and I was struggling. That year I sprained my right ankle and managed to catch mononucleosis, and I made no improvements in the vault. I was simply thinning myself out, grasping for straws. I was unhappy both on and off the track. I remember when I discussed with my coach why I wanted to leave, he stated “you know, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.” In my case, it wasn’t about the grass being greener, it was about the grass being a different shade of green. I had finally figured out my priorities, and knew I needed a fresh start. So then it began, my journey to the middle of the country to try jumping on sticks with a different coach and a new life.

So what am I up to now? Well, I have been at Arkansas for two years, I red shirted outdoor season my junior year and indoor season this year, so I have a fifth year of eligibility left. I am sitting on a plane from LAX to Ohare, crammed in my own luxurious 2 square foot space typing this stuff out. I am trying to get back to Arkansas from the 2014 USA Outdoor Championships. Getting from the west coast to the south is never easy. Long flights, delays, lost luggage – it is an absolute nightmare. I was supposed to be back to Fayetteville around 5:30 Central time, but thanks to excess time sitting on the runway in Sacramento, I missed my connecting flight home, causing a domino effect of unfortunate events. Regardless, I think I will get home some time before the sun comes up. Let us just be positive here, at least I can sit and work on this blog. Yes, this is just me trying to comfort myself. Nobody likes dealing with airlines. I like the actual flying part… looking out of the window at the landscapes passing below my feet… but I hate airports. And I hate tight spaces. Shoulder-to-shoulder with other people is not my cup of tea.

What is my cup of tea, you ask? Well, I guess the thing I created this blog to discuss; pole vault. Yes, yes, that is my cup of tea. I live and breathe the pole vault. Pole vault and I have a love/hate relationship in the sense that I cannot manage to ever be completely satisfied. I can attain a personal best one day, leaving me both hungry and satisfied at the same time, but the next meet could be terrible, which always keeps me coming back to redeem myself. Polevault has become a great passion of mine, and I feel that I will continue pursuing the next bar until I am too old to do so any longer.

So please follow my blog, listen to the story of my life as it plays out. Being a vaulter is a lifestyle, unique in so many ways. Continue to read and find out why.

Thanks for reading my first post.

Sandi