Compared to the hoops that juniors Lisa Bell and Becca Gould had to jump through just to get to the runway, clearing the bar was the easy part.
Fourteen years after the Duke women's track program came into existence, female pole vaulters began competition on Jan. 17 at the Lehigh Convert Classic. This marks the first year that women's pole vaulting will be included in the NCAA championships as an officially sanctioned sport.
"I asked about [pole vaulting] my freshman year here and I got laughed at," Gould said. "The excuses that I had been told were ridiculous. They said that if women did it they couldn't have babies and that we weren't strong enough."
Gould competed with boys as a high school junior in Newton, Mass. At the time, there was no sanctioned female competition, a situation which changed after Gould and others sued for the right to participate.
When she was allowed to compete, the atmosphere was awkward and uncomfortable.
"It was really good with the guys on my team, but when I competed, [opponents] were almost obnoxious about it," Gould said. "They felt threatened that I would do better than them."
Although Bell had an easier time than Gould participating in the sport in high school, the transition to college was painful when she found out that she could no longer vault. She had been competing since her sophomore year of high school in Bretwood, Calif., which, along with 10 other states, sanctions girls' pole vaulting at the high school level.
"Especially coming to Duke from the West Coast, where I had been allowed to [vault] for three years, the excuses just didn't fit anymore," she said.
Pole vaulting, which will be a women's medal sport in the 2000 Olympics, is just the latest in a long list of track and field events which are now open to women.
The steeplechase and the decathlon remain as the only two events which exclude women from competition.
The long jump, interestingly, was previously closed to women because "experts" felt that the continued impact could damage the female reproductive system.
"There are several events that women were not allowed to do," women's track coach Jan Samuelson-Ogilve said. "When I was in high school, they didn't allow me to do the 400 and the 800 together. Slowly but surely, there have been more events put into women's competition."
An argument against adding female pole vaulting is that the sport as a whole is quite dangerous. Last April, a male high school vaulter from California was killed after he missed the mat and hit his head on concrete during practice.
"There's a big fluorescent label right where you're supposed to grip the pole that says 'Death and major injury have occurred from participation in this event,'" Bell said. "There's a certain attitude about pole vaulting. You have to think no fear."
Gymnastics, a sport which requires a similar mentality, often leads into pole vaulting. Gymnasts possess an acute sense of their body position in the air, which is extremely important in vaulting.
"We have a lot of women who were gymnasts in high school with great body awareness who can be good pole vaulters," Samuelson-Ogilve said. "It's a natural thing for someone with speed and gymnastic training."
Australian Emma George, the world record holder at 14' 11-1/4", started pole vaulting after spending time in the circus as a trapeze artist.
Freshman Jillian Schwartz is the first Blue Devil to combine a gymnastics background with the pole vault. She currently competes in the hurdles and jumps but is hoping to compete in the pole vault at some point.
For Bell and Gould, who do not have a gymnastics background, re-learning pole vaulting after taking years off is no easy task. Helping to re-train them is volunteer coach Mike Shankle.
Shankle, a former Duke vaulter and a pilot for US Airways three days a week, spends much of his spare time coaching both the male and female vaulters. He still holds the fourth-highest vault in Duke history at 15' 6". Shankle's father, Joel, earned a bronze medal in the 110m hurdles in the 1956 Olympics after running track at Duke.
Shankle is focusing Bell and Gould on their goal of making the Eastern College Athletic Conference Championships-a competition for the top 12 vaulters on the East Coast.
Bell currently stands second in the conference with her school-record jump of 8' 6", recorded last weekend at the Virginia Tech Classic.
While Bell and Gould may finally be able to take vaulting for granted, they are fully aware of what their new records and milestones will mean in the future.
"I'm excited that we will be able to look back and see that there were girls that were actually recruited for pole vaulting, and that we were the first," Gould said. "It's a great thing to tell your children."
And having children, contrary to previous wisdom, is indeed a possibility for female pole vaulters.
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