Practice Videos From Friday Night

My coach, Tom Hays went out of town to Jamaica on Wednesday morning to conduct a Pole Vault Clinic for the benefit of Jamaican pole vaulting. It's quite an honor that he was chosen to put on the clinic and I'm glad he got to take his wife down there and have somewhat of a relaxing weekend... maybe, ha. I'll find out when he gets back in town. With that being said, Ryan and I were on our own for our vault session Friday night. We still have our raised runway out on a field behind our softball stadium and it's really difficult to run more than 10 steps and put up a decent take off. So we just worked on rhythm like what coach usually tells us to do when he's not around. We took about 8 jumps or so and called it a day. All I'm doing is staying in shape until this Saturday for the Colorado State Fair Vault, then I'll be able to take 2 weeks off before starting back for the next year. I'll touch more on that later... Here are my last 4 vaults of the practice. The only thing I was trying to do was be fluid and not let my feet fall out at the top. The first vault is on a 15'7" 18.2 and the others are on a 16' 17.5.

Jammin' & Jumpin' Video

Well here they are... not happy about showing these. I really hope potential sponsors wouldn't base their decisions on this particular video cuz I look like poop. But everyone has rough days and I do think you deserve seeing me on a good day as well as a bad one. But I'm gonna kick butt next meet. End of story.



And here's an awesome picture that Julia took. This was our view before the sun went down.

I should rename this: Life, SCHOOL, WORK, Vaulting, and Balance

Holy crap I start school on Monday!! I have no idea what to expect for graduate school. I know there wont be nearly as many people in each class, and I even heard it was "easier" than undergrad, but I'm not letting myself think that from the get-go. I'm expecting it to be more reading, more writing, more discussion, more hands-on, and less quizzes, tests, homework assignments. But I could be wrong. I'm not even sure where I got that idea put in my head because that's a complete fabrication I think, ha. But I will definitely let you know soon. I start class on Monday (I think... I should really find that out for sure, huh). Well actually, I only have class on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday night and only 3 classes total. So I guess I don't start school till Tuesday, Hot Dog! My schedule will work something like this:

Weights - 6:30am-8:00am
Work - 9:00am-4:00pm
Class (T,W,TH) - 4:30pm-7:00pm
Practice (F,S,Su,M) - Whenever I have time...

Coach decided that for at least this semester, the days I have class will be my new weekend. It's a weird thought but it makes sense. even though I don't like the idea of school being on the "weekend" ha. Whatever, we'll see how it works out. But one thing's for sure... This blog may get a little left out with all the rest of stuff goin on. I'm gonna try my best to keep it updated as much as possible, but as you can see... OUCH, no time for life.
Right now I am still laying in bed (it's a great day) because I'm helping out our "Williams Educational Fund" which is in charge of all of our donors and fundraising. This week is "Select-A-Seat" for Men's Basketball this season. All the donors get to come in and select which seat they want for the season, in order of their amount of cumulative contributions. I am one of the seaters. I meet each each donor, or family, look at what seats they had last year, and find them the best available seats left. On Monday of course, all the high-rollers were selecting, and it goes down each day until Friday. I'm not sure how many people are still left though, because the field house looks pretty full to me already! I just can't believe how big basketball is here, but it's just a way of life. It began here and it will live on forever. Anyway, I have different hours this week and today I don't have to go in till 12. Actually I wasn't supposed to work till 2pm, but I heard they were serving us Bigg's BBQ for lunch today at 12:30, so I asked if I could come in early, haha. I'm so excited for that meal. I haven't eaten anything yet today and I might not eat anything until that feast. I'm stoked. Don't be jealous, I'll let you know how it is later. Well I got a couple of things I need to do before work, so I'll stop myself here. Oh, and I have a short run vault practice tonight after work. Hopefully it goes well, and if I'm jumping well, I'll try to put a video or two on here later. And if anyone was actually interested in watching my videos from the Kentucky meet, let me know and I'll put em up. They were just kind of pathetic so I didn't think I would post them but I don't really see why not anymore. You guys are my fans so I guess I should let you be a part of my life through the good and the ugly! But seriously, let me know, cuz I'm not going to unless someone asks...

4th Place with 17' in Kentucky... OUCH

Wow, never did I think I would go down to the Jammin' and Jumpin' Street Vault and only jump 17 feet... After all the great practices I've been having, it was really upsetting to jump what I did my junior year in high school. I hate to blame my poor performance on anything other than my own bad mechanics, but 17' was also the winning height for the men. Darren Niedermeyer, Mark Hollis, and I all jumped 17' and couldn't understand why. (Mary Saxer won the competition with the height difference handicap). Darren was the only vaulter who actually said he felt great that day. All of the other vaulters, including myself, kept asking each other and ourselves why we didn't feel good at all. Everyone felt pretty good on the runway (a little slow) but then when we hit the box, we got yanked off the ground and came up short. That right there makes me think that it was a shallow box. It's the only thing that makes sense. And niedermeyer is just enough of a beast, that it didn't affect him, ha. But one of the meet directors claimed it wasn't shallow. So who knows, but a bunch of us guys should've been over 17' and several over 17'6". I was on a 5m 14.9 flex pole the whole meet, holding down about a fist lower than my normal grip on that pole. If you remember, a few posts ago, I told you I was jumping on 5m 14.5 pole from 14 steps!! Granted, that runway we have set up is slightly downhill, it still doesn't make sense. I felt great on the runway from 18 steps but just could not get a good take off to save my life. I'm definitely not saying that it wasn't my fault, it very well could have been me just defaulting back to my bad technique from high school, like I do from time to time. But the fact that nearly everyone jumped a lot lower than they typically do, I don't want to blame myself, haha. All I can do is move on and use the little bit of prize money that I profited to put in my savings account until the next trip. Not sure when my next meet will be, but we'll see and I'll keep you posted. I want to give a shout out to Mark Hollis and say good luck at the World Championships!! I think he leaves this week and I'm really excited for him! Go get 'em Mark! And good luck to Derek Miles and Jeremy Scott at Worlds as well!
P.S. here are some photos from the trip:

What an awesome bear huh?! haha

Julia was actually the first one who wanted a picture haha

Just a great sign...

Double Rainbowwww!!!

It was a gorgeous sunset on the way there!

THE BEST CHICKEN PLACE EVER. Originated in Georgia, nuff said.

Zaxby's buffalo chicken fingers. I've been to Zaxby's around 439 times and ordered these 436 of those times.

My hair for the meet

My hair for the meet

Jammin'

Jumpin'

LIVE VIDEO Stream on Saturday!!

I saw on the Jammin' and Jumpin' Street Vault website that they're supposed to have a live stream of the elite competition Saturday night! It should be at the bottom of this page: SM Track Club. The scheduled start time is 8pm Central Time. I hope it works and I hope all of you can watch, cause I think it's going to be an exciting night ;) I had another great practice tonight from 14 steps. I was jumping on the 5m 14.9 from 14 steps into a pretty strong headwind. I was really pleased with my jumping and so was coach. I was actually starting to swing past the pole as I was inverting and going straight up the pole. It was weird of course cuz I don't ever do that but if I can get that going at this meet this weekend that'd be great... I'm gonna take some big poles down there and see if I can't squirm onto a few of em. Lookin forward to it! I'm ready! We're leaving tomorrow around noon or so and just booked a hotel room for the next couple nights. I'll try to post an update tomorrow night, maybe with a picture of my hair if we get it done. But I'm thinking we'll dye my hair Saturday before the competition. Please let me know if you have any ideas cuz as of right now... I have no ideas. HELP, ha.