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Mark Hollis makes his way over the bar and goes on to win the men's invitational pole vault at the Drake Relays held at Jordan Creek Mall in West Des Moines on April 22, 2009. (AP Photo/The Des Moines Register, Andrea Melendez)

Last spring, world class pole vaulters competed in the Drake Relays pole vault competition at Jordan Creek Town Center in West Des Moines.

The track and field event involves athletes sprinting down a runway toward a horizontal crossbar with a pole in hand. When they reach the vault box, a narrow lane where the pole is planted, the vaulter uses the pole to propel themselves over the crossbar, landing on a large padded mat.

The 2024 event was the first time the venue was used in a decade, bringing attention to a sport Iowans won’t see at their local high school’s track and field meets.

One Gazette reader wondered why pole vault is not offered at Iowa High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) track and field competitions. So, they wrote to Curious Iowa, a series from The Gazette that answers readers’ questions about our state and how it works for the answer.

We looked into the history of the decision to eliminate pole vaulting from IHSAA events, how Iowa universities recruit pole vaulters to their track and field teams, and ongoing efforts to bring attention to the sport.

Why did the IHSAA eliminate pole vaulting from its offerings?

Sandi Morris clears the bar while competing in the women's World Showdown Invitational pole vault during Drake Relays at Drake Stadium in Des Moines on April 26, 2019. (The Gazette)

Today, vaulters use poles made of flexible, lightweight fiberglass or carbon fiber. Throughout history, poles have been made from metal, bamboo and even wood.

Just as advancements have been made to the poles, safety regulations have been updated over the years — prompted by injuries and in some cases, death.

In 1978, 14-year-old Charles ‘Chuckie’ VanKeulen was training inside with the Bettendorf Middle School track team. According to reporting from the Quad-City Times, VanKeulen vaulted over the bar at about 7 feet, landing on the foam pad. VanKeulen bounced off the pad and hit his head on the gym floor, fracturing the left side of his skull. VanKeulen fell into a coma and died 17 days later.

Between 1982 and 1998, U.S. athletes sustained 32 catastrophic injuries while pole vaulting. Of those injuries, 94 percent involved improper landings near the edge of the pad or in the vault box, resulting in 16 fatalities and six cases of incomplete neurological recovery.

Chris Cuellar, spokesperson for the IHSAA, said the early 1980s brought on discussions about pole vaulting’s future within the organization’s offerings. These conversations were fueled by safety concerns and limited participation and led to multiple “reviews” of the event’s status with the IHSAA board, advisory committee and representative council.

“Looking back to history within our bulletins, this was a five or six year process that ultimately ended with a decision,” Jared Chizek, track and field administrator for the IHSAA, said, noting that concerns were raised from member schools about why the event was being offered while schools struggled with the cost associated with standardized safety equipment, limited participation and questions about safety.

Jared Chizek, track and field administrator, Iowa High School Athletic Association

In 1985, Cedar Rapids public schools stopped participating in the event. Tom Ecker, then-administrative assistant for public information and activities for the Cedar Rapids school district, told The Gazette that the event was too dangerous and too expensive. Ecker is a former state vaulting champion and coached vaulters at the international level, like Sweden’s 1968 Olympic team.

“It might be expensive because we’ve had about three poles broken in the last week,” Dusty Ernberger, a Jefferson High School vaulter told The Gazette in 1985. “But I definitely think football is more dangerous myself.”

Following a survey from member schools, the IHSAA removed pole vaulting from junior high track and field offerings after the spring of 1983.

“This was an issue (that) while talked about at the state office level, ultimately the schools had input on and actually had a membership survey on whether or not to keep this event alive throughout the whole process,” Chizek said.

In 1986, IHSAA member schools voted on elimination of the pole vault event. The final results showed 342 votes in favor of elimination of the event; 75 voted no and 14 ballots were spoiled.

It wasn’t a push from mostly small schools, either. Chizek noted that at the time there were 64 Class 4A schools. Of those 64 schools, 42 voted to eliminate pole vault.

The event was phased out over three seasons, officially ending in the 1988-89 season.

Iowa was the first state to not offer high school competition in pole vault. Alaska eliminated the event from its state competition in 1991.

Bernie Saggau, then-executive secretary of the IHSAA said in 1986, “The National Federation of High School Athletic Associations (NHSF) has set rigid standards for pits in 1987 that could cost up to $5,000. Schools felt that was too costly for just a few athletes who compete in the pole vault.”

While the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union sanctioned track and field in 1962, pole vault was never offered.

Is pole vaulting safe?

Jeremy Scott, former Olympic pole vaulter and orthopedic surgery resident at Oklahoma State University

Jeremy Scott, a former U.S. pole vaulter who competed in the 2012 Olympics, told The Gazette that when pole vaulters are taught properly, “it’s really not that dangerous.”

He pointed to advancements in equipment and coaching as making the sport safer in recent decades. Over the years, both the NCAA and NHSF have changed requirements, enlarging the sizes of the mats vaulters land on. Box collars are also used to pad the area around the vault box.

Scott, who is retired from pole vaulting and finishing his orthopedic surgery residency at Oklahoma State, helped pen a 2025 study that looked into the impact of landing technique and experience level in injury risk in pole vaulters. The study collected data from 1,012 athletes ranging from beginner to elite levels at the 2015 National Pole Vault Summit in Reno, Nevada.

Only eight injuries occurred from 6,751 vault attempts. The most serious was a concussion. Other injuries included back, ankle and knee sprains and contusions.

“It was a very low rate, less than 1 percent of injury rate, which is quite a bit lower than sports like football and hockey and other contact sports,” Scott said. “So I think overall, it’s safe when you’re taught the right way and you go about it in a reasonable fashion.”

Scott also pointed to increased access to quality coaching. When Scott was vaulting, he worked with Earl Bell at Bell Athletics in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

“Earl is one of the best coaches in the world, but at that time he was like the only training center through most of the 90s and into the early 2000s,” Scott said. “And now there’s tons and tons of little training centers and clubs and opportunities for coaching.”

Jeff Coover, jumps coach for the University of Northern Iowa track and field team, noted that the digital age has been beneficial.

“Coaches being able to communicate more freely, athletes being able to communicate more freely and hold each other accountable for any unsafe practices that might be getting carried out,” Coover said. “It’s pretty easy to kind of check each other, so to speak.”

UNI’s Carter Morton launches himself over the pole during the pole vault decathlon event during the Drake Relays at Drake Stadium in Des Moines on April 27, 2023. Morton placed first overall in the decathlon events. (Savannah Blake/The Gazette)

How do Iowa universities recruit pole vaulters for their track and field teams?

Jeff Coover, Jumps Coach, University of Northern Iowa

University of Northern Iowa has eight pole vaulters on its roster.

Coover said that the university has had a strong history with pole vaulting. He attributes the team’s success to “several smart and successful pole vault coaches that brought in talent.”

Where does UNI find pole vaulting talent? Out of state.

“In my time at UNI, I have gone out and recruited every neighboring state that we have for the pole vault and brought in pole vaulters from out of state,” Coover said, calling the process “more of a struggle.”

UNI competes in the Missouri Valley Conference along with Drake.

“And every other school that we compete against is outside of Iowa,” Coover said, “and given the fact that (nearly) every other state in the United States has high school pole vault, that means that everybody that we compete against is recruiting for the event.”

He noted that the University of Iowa and Iowa State do not contest the event.

“I don’t fault them one bit for that because it’s an effective strategy to say hey, listen, we can’t recruit this event in-state and really good kids from out of state probably aren’t going to come here to do this event so we’re just not going to do it … but I’m really glad that (UNI has) decided to go all in on trying to keep the event around on our track team.”

Will pole vaulting ever return to Iowa high school competitions?

Cuellar and Chizek said that there has not been a formal proposal from the IHSAA’s schools or advisory committee to add pole vault back to the organization’s track and field offerings.

“We might have talked about other field events, but not the pole vault just because of the cost associated with it,” Chizek said, adding that additional barriers include interest in the event and coaching knowledge.

“It’s a very technical event, so if you’re going to offer it, you need to have an individual that can teach the proper technique with that,” Chizek said.

In 2020, then-Iowa Rep. Tedd Gassman introduced a bill that would have required pole vault be an event on Iowa high school track event schedules. Gassman pole vaulted while in high school in South Dakota in the late 1950s.

He was inspired to file the bill after attending a Kansas state track meet in which his granddaughter was competing. There, he met a student who had competed in pole vault at the state level and was recruited by UNI.

The bill didn’t move forward, but Coover said he would support the issue if it came up again in the Iowa Legislature.

“I think that it’s really unfortunate that kids in Iowa especially are not able to have some of those experiences that I was able to have just because we’re being hard headed about an event that is absolutely safe to do and that a lot of people in our state would be excited to coach and bring up athletes,” Coover said.

Chizek said that every few years, an Iowa legislator will reach out to the IHSAA and inquire about bringing back the pole vault event.

“When they reach out to us, we share with them here’s the history of why the event went away and … we also share with them a skin and bones (of) here’s what it would cost each school if this were to go through,” Chizek said, adding that the cost would include constructing a runway with a vault box and also require landing pads, poles and helmets.

“As the athletic association, we can’t lobby, so if someone were to make a hard push … at the statehouse about the pole vault, it’d be up to the schools to share their concerns or yay or nay with that if we were to get that far,” Chizek said.

Coover is working to “reverse engineer” youth pole vault in Iowa. Last summer, he started the Panther Pole Vault Club. His goal is to use the club as a venue for kids to experience the sport, “whether they can contest it at the high school level or not.”

“Anybody can always reach out to me if they want their kid to get involved in the sport and they’re willing to drive to Cedar Falls,” Coover said. “I’m willing to coach them if they sign a waiver.”

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