Vaulter Club geared up six athletes to head on past League Finals and into CIF Prelims. Katie Rodriguez, Aspen Fears, Paige Hansen, Madisyn Negro, Tiger Bachmeier, and Emily Westfall. With the six competitors heading to CIF Prelims, there were high hopes moving on to CIF Finals. Fortunately, four of those six vaulters did.
Katie had many amazing vaults soaring over 10’6”, coming close to PR’ing, however her sophomore pole vault season ended at CIF Prelims. As one of the only sophomores in the D1 CIF Prelims, making it this far was a great accomplishment.
Aspen was the only freshman to make it to D1 CIF prelims. Not only that, but she was seated second behind Paige Sommers (the senior and national high school girls record holder). As the number one freshman in the state, there were all eyes on Aspen, however she had her first no-height and learned about the bitter unforgiveness of these big CIF meets and will be ready to conquer next year.
Paige was the only Vaulter Club athlete who had to battle at CIF prelims with her club poles but without her club coaches. This tough kid had no problems, however because she battled with the best of them and ended up qualifying for CIF Finals where she had to compete without her club coaches as well because all the club coaches had to coach their high school athletes at D1 CIF Finals at the same time, but different places. Fortunately, this sophmore takes her club training very seriously and used all of her experience at practice to help her get over some serious bars at CIF Finals.
Madisyn came into CIF Prelims and was extremely consistent. She did phenomenally as one of the only other sophomores in the meet getting third place behind two seniors at D1 CIF Finals. This hard worker will likely take the title as the Murrieta Valley High School girl’s record holder. With Madisyn’s personal best being 11’9.75”, she is only about 3 inches away from beating it. Madisyn has been jumping for a few years here at Vaulter Club and all of the hours are coming into use.
Tiger is the newest member of Vaulter Club. Joining the team about a month or two prior to CIF, he wowed everybody with his athletic ability and his rapid rise in PR’s. After such a short amount of time vaulting, Tiger clearing 14’ at CIF Prelims was quite the accomplishment. That being said, to come into D1 CIF Finals with a bloody nose and then tying his personal best of 14’3 was a massive undertaking, especially for a sophomore. Given his lack of time vaulting, being so new, Tiger has some kinks to work out form-wise before he gets too crazy high, however, once Tiger fixes some of form issues, he will likely be the highest vaulter in California.
Emily took the roll of ‘Clutch Vista Murrieta Vaulter Club athlete’ following tamara Bader and Katrina Meier before her. She, along with her alumni, were able to clear massive bars when they needed to in order to move on. In Emily’s case at D1 CIF Prelims, her options were to get a brand new personal record of 11’6” and move onto Finals, or miss 11’6” and have her senior year end right there on the track at prelims. Fortunately, Emily decided that she was going to give 11’6” all she had as if it was the last time she would ever jump in the Vista uniform and we are happy to say that it wasn’t. She PR’d to 11’6” and moved onto CIF Finals where she sat tied at 5th place with two other girls. Unfortunately, the host of the meet decided he did not want a tie for 5th place and he decided he wanted to do a jump off after the meet had concluded a long while after where Emily tied her new PR of 11’6”, but did not beat out both of the other two girls.
Overall, this was a very interesting high school track season filled with social distancing, masks, heat, cancellation paranoia, and PR’s. While the two CIF meets were extremely hot, the battles that our athletes fought made the time well worth spent.