Get Your Pole Vaulting Poles Off The Ground And In A Case

Pole vaulting poles are expensive and will last a long time if you protect your investment.  In fact, just the other day I vaulted on a 14′6″ 185 Pacer Carbon made in 1995.  The pole worked fine because I tend to take care of my equipment.

I was at a meet today and I felt somewhat ill when I saw the assortment of pole vaulting poles lying around on the ground. Are you kidding me? Coaches, athletes, and parents share in this responsiblity.  To the coaches I say this: make sure that your school pole vaulting poles are not lying around on the ground.  These are expensive line items on a purchase order and there is no reason for them to be neglected as I witnessed today.  To the parents I say this: Don’t let your children or their teammates leave their poles lying around on the ground.  To the athletes I say this: Just because you didn’t have to pay for the poles, doesn’t give you the right to mistreat them!

So how can the problem be solved?  The effective and long lasting solution is to purchase a piece of Double-Q drainage pipe and store your poles in the tube.  If you ever see Pole Vault City at a meet you will notice that we have some big black tubes.  That’s how we keep our poles from being damaged unnecessarily.  Poles are going to get damaged over the years and some will even be broken, but that doesn’t mean that we have to put our poles in a dangerous situation.  There are two reasons I recommend the Double-Q: First, it is completely lined on the inside so your poles have a nice smooth environment in which to be stored; second, when the tubes are empty, they don’t turn into a giant swirly as does the Single-Q.  These tubes are extremely durable and I found out the hard way many years back when I had a team shot fall out of one of the seats and break 2 of my nice pole vaulting poles.  Ever since that day, I’ve been using the drainage pipe.  The short term solution is to rest them on the fence at an angle so they are somewhat out of harms way.  This is not a great solution, but it beats lying the poles around on the ground.

Fiberglass and carbon-fiber poles can withstand a tremendous amount of energy as they bend and recoil, hopefully propelling a vaulter successfully over a bar.  These poles do not do well when they receive fractures or dings.  When poles are just lying around on the ground, they stand a good chance of coming into contact with one of those sharp, pointed, little spikes on the bottom of everyones shoes at a track meet.  These dings don’t seem like much until the pole is put under pressure when bent and low and behold the freaking thing breaks.  It happens more than you would believe.  Coaches, parents, and athletes - please take care of your equipment and your equipment will take care of you.