RECRUITED

Rebekah Ross

Brigham Young University

By Tim Reilly

One of my favorite pictures is of a small girl in yellow rubber boots and a pink rain jacket squatting in the muddy grass of an expansive field, staring and poking into the earth below her with fascination. While most would miss it in the larger landscape, she found something rich in this spot that is worth a piece of her day.

In my 30 years of teaching and now 6 years of coaching a club of hundreds of good athletes passing through, I’ve learned the same rich insight that each athlete has a unique and special tale of their journey to me. Often there has been a network of supportive parents, teachers, and coaches in the story, but in the case of North West Pole Vault senior Rebekah Ross, there is also a remarkable history of passionate industry on multiple fronts.

Like many of the athletes I coach, Rebekah is a rock star student. She maintains a 4.0 GPA and also takes as many AP courses as she can. She will have managed 13 of them before graduating. Students like Rebekah often exhaust themselves at the expense of their spirit, especially with the added stress of self-study in Covid times, but it’s only a fraction of her output. Rebekah is a master classical piano player who has competed and performed at the highest levels of junior music in Spokane. I’ve known many elite teen musicians over my years, and the hours of commitment are mind-boggling. Very few have the bandwidth for sports as well.

After years of gymnastics and a short stint with ballet, Rebekah tried pole vault at the suggestion of someone at Central Valley High School. She was quickly enchanted. After a 9’6” freshman season, she sought more help with a trip to a summer camp with me and a club coach near her, offering sessions twice a week in the winter. Rebekah jumped 11’6” her sophomore year and attended another spring camp last March with me in Seattle, but then Covid shut her down. These are the defining moments that separate the champions from the rest.

Rebekah had found her sport, and her dream was to continue doing it at Brigham Young University. Throughout the spring, her mom drove her 30 minutes each way to an open track where Rebekah could continue pole runs by herself. By summer she was starved for more and was permitted to spend days at a time training and staying with her grandparents near Seattle, if she could commit to absolute Covid safety 24/7 for their sakes. This began an odyssey of 9-hour car trips twice a month with her mom, that continued through the fall and winter this year.

It takes a village.

Rebekah Ross

I reached out to Rick McWhorter at BYU pretty early last summer to say, “Coach, I’ve got a special one for you I can promise will be a 12’6” er at least and who will not let up on the gas pedal until she makes 14’ in your care.”

He has been a happy correspondent ever since with updates on her progress. Rebekah signed with them in November. I’ve coached dozens of 12’6+ vaulters who have moved on to college programs, but many have been taller, more advanced in gymnastics, and more singularly focused on the vault.

There is another dynamic in Rebekah’s engine room that adds steam to her various pursuits. Here I go off grid and speculate: sometimes kids hand me their phones to catch videos of their vaulting. Screensavers enshrine what we love most and what we like to be reminded of 50 times a day. Rebekah’s screensaver is an image of Jesus. This is nothing she has ever mentioned, of course, but it’s a big part of why she wants to attend BYU; she wants to do mission work. During Covid, she made masks and hats for homeless folks hardest hit by the challenges of our times. In our training sessions and meets, there might be no one so consistently hooting for the successes of teammates. She thanks me every time she leaves, and just seems to be bountifully grateful for her daily blessings.

As I sit a while today and look down into the wet grass of my club that’s full of fascinating and lovable teenagers, I think this special one is a brilliantly gifted young woman enflamed by faith. In my view, such are the highest hopes for our future. It’s been my privilege to know her and to share her story here.

Photos provided by Rebekah Ross