Sydney Horn The National Pole Higher at High Point Vault Summit :
A Brief and Charming History By Debbie Chappell Over dinner on an icy winter night in the late 1980’s, my husband Steve asked me what I thought of the idea of having a coach’s clinic and competition in Reno, Nevada….in the middle of January. I pondered how to delicately tell him he was out of his mind. After all, winters in Reno at the base of the rugged Sierra mountains can be brutal…howling wind, snow. Before I could get the words out, he shared what he and Lane (Maestretti) his colleague and cohort at UCS Spirit, had been thinking ever since they had returned from Fresno that year. At the invitation of Bob Fraley, head track coach at Fresno State at the time, Steve and Lane attended a clinic he hosted highlighting the pole vault and local coaches. It was well received and afterwards Bob suggested Steve and Lane do something similar in Reno. With northern Nevada being the home of UCS Spirit, this wasn’t completely illogical and had the added benefit of being a fun place Bob and his wife Elaine liked to visit to gamble.
16
Photo credit: Pole Vault Carolina
T A K E O F F
M A G A Z I N E
Sitting at almost 5,000 feet elevation and known for little else, Reno is not much of a sporting town. Steve and Lane would have their work cut out to entice anyone to come here,
in January no less. But they invited a few coaches and some local athletes anyway, promising a friendly little competition afterwards to make things fun. To their surprise, 70 people signed up for the first “Summit”. (The name came later, born from the concept of converging ideas and vault philosophies melded with the alpine setting.) Most of the participants were from the west coast and they ran the competition on one pit. Afterwards, they had pizzas delivered and everyone sat on the floor of the Reno Livestock Event Center to eat them. Word spread, especially among high school coaches and athletes, again mostly from the west. Pretty soon five pits were needed, two on the infield and the remainder on the mezzanine of the arena. Steve, Lane, and Bob had to work to keep up with the growing numbers and rounded up more of the best coaches they knew for instruction, including Gregg Hull, Brian Yokayama and others. Then, a good number of post-collegiate athletes looking for competition started showing up. Several elite west coast athletes heard about it, and because of a lack of indoor meets, they came looking for competition. When word got out to the east coast athletes about this great little competition in Nevada,