Photo by Pat Christman
Minnesota State pole vaulter Katelin Rains practices recently at the Myers Field House. Rains is the reigning Division II indoor champion and national record holder.
Rains heads talented Maverick vaulters It’s a pole-vault thing. You probably wouldn’t understand.
But, Minnesota State’s Katelin Rains is more than willing to help you out with that.
“You’ve gotta be a little bit insane to pole vault,” Rains said.
Rains, the reigning NCAA Division II indoor champion and current record holder, can’t get enough of it, though. Like many vaulters, she has a passion for the track-and-field event that, she admits, borders on obsession.
“If they had a pole-vault drink, I guarantee we’d be drinking them,” Rains said.
If Rains and five other Mavericks weren’t literally drinking, eating and breathing the sport this weekend in Reno, Nev., they were at least living it, participating in the 18th annual National Pole Vault Summit, a clinic, convention and competition for hundreds of folks who are just crazy enough “to propel yourself into the air and upside down” 14, 15, 16 feet or higher into the air.
“There’s no track,” Rains said of the summit, which is for vaulters of all levels. “Just pits.”
Rains, who, on Dec. 8, broke her own D-II record by clearing 14-feet-01⁄2 inches, competed against other elite vaulters — the inner circle of an already-small niche of athletes.
“She gets to rub some elbows with the big girls — Olympians and Olympic hopefuls,” MSU pole-vault coach Matt Kolb said before departing last week. “She’s going to the big time. She’s gotta go out there and feel like she belongs there.”
In Friday’s elite competition, Rains finished in a tie for sixth with a height of 12-111⁄2. The winning vault was 14-11⁄4.
Kolb, who holds Minnesota State’s men’s pole-vault records and became the highest-flying Minnesotan when he cleared 18-3 in 1987, has a pole-vault pit in his backyard and took his son, Chris, a Mankato West freshman who has a personal record of 13-6, to Reno, too.
It’s the coach’s love of and enthusiasm for the event, Rains said, that is contagious to the athletes.
“You could call Matt at 2 a.m. and say, ‘I’d like to vault,’ and he’d come up to open the doors for you,” MSU men’s track head coach Mark Schuck said.
Minnesota State freshmen Lauren Stelten, Alex Johnson, Bryan Atwood and Nick Yenser and sophomore Whitney Kroschel also attended the summit.
Stelten won the Class AA state title last spring for Chaska High School. Yenser and Johnson were Wisconsin’s boys and girls champions, respectively.
“We have an awesome set of freshmen,” Rains said. “I’m really excited to see how they do this year. ... We’re lucky; they’re really passionate.”
Atwood, a Mankato East graduate, finished third at state last June. His goal, he said, is to qualify for the national indoor meet, which Minnesota State will host in March.
Two-time state champion and defending North Central Conference outdoor champion Nick Wilson of Mankato West, also vaults for the Mavericks.
“There’s been a great history of vaulting here,” said Schuck, who himself was a pole vaulter for MSU in the 1960s.
Indeed, Minnesota State pole vaulters have earned All-American honors 26 times, including indoor national championships by Rains, Amanda Frame (2004, 2005) and Charles Zheng (1992).
“It’s the best program,” Atwood said.
Stelten agreed. While Rains, who has already qualified for this summer’s Olympic trials, spent the weekend learning tricks of the trade from some of the country’s top vaulters, Stelten has been trying to pick Rains’ brain.
“I get to bug her,” she said, “and ask a lot of questions.”
And Rains, of course, is more than willing to give her answers.
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