ESSX - UST Mamiya The Next Level

By Adele San Miguel

Team ESSX has a lot to brag about, including eleven athletes competing in the XXXII Olympiad using their vaulting poles.

But they are not boastful. Instead, a small team of former pole vaulters, Tye Harvey, Brian Mondschein, Jeremy Scott, and Mike Vani intently focus on the needs of their professional, collegiate, and club athletes. A part-time crew with full-time jobs elsewhere, their love for the sport and the relationships they foster within the vault community are their why.

Listening is their how.

In 1996, track and field entrepreneur Bruce Caldwell purchased a shell company with the intentions of bringing a new pole to the market. The company made a box device called Essx that split the interchange between fax and voice on an incoming line. The device itself was sold to Ma Bell (AT&T), but Bruce owned the trademark. Liking the snappy sound of Essx, he used it for the name of the pole company he launched in ’98, took public in 2001, and private again in 2004.

Bruce’s acumen for designing a pole to get the most from it, paired well with Beto Sanchez, the engineer who knew how to build it. When Sam Kendricks needed a solution for how to take massive jumps on smaller poles without breaking them, his parents reached out to Bruce. Bruce and Beto constructed two sets of poles and drove them to Sam’s house, confidently telling him to try and break the poles. Eight years, and a medal-filled career later, Sam is still jumping for ESSX.

In 2012, Bruce sold ESSX to UST-Mamiya Golf, a Japanese enterprise that engineers the shafts for golf clubs. In this partnership, UST-Mamiya augmented the aerodynamic details and contributed the next tier of materials for pole making. Considering the high quality of the existing pole, the new team pondered, how can this be improved?

They interviewed the athletes. What would a dream pole feel like in your hands? When you plant and swing, what do you want the pole to do? How can we make a pole that will help you achieve your potential?

Retooling something great to make it even better, they created the Recoil Advanced from the lens of possibility rather than the limitations of manufacturing, producing what is arguably the most vaulter friendly pole in the market. It is easy to roll with and offers a powerful return.

The streamlining of ESSX poles meant that poles with heavier weight ratings did not have to increase in diameter. Athletes can move up to the next pole more easily, because the poles are easier to manage, lighter in the hands, and flexible.

Sam’s success, which includes two world championships; the American outdoor record; 3-time indoor national championships; 6-time outdoor national championships; an Olympic bronze medal and another trip to the Games this month, put ESSX on the map. Other elite athletes followed.

In fact, quite a few. In 2016, four Olympians competed on ESSX, Sam, Ruby Peinado of Venezuela, Luke Cutts of Great Britain, and Pauls Pujats of Latvia. In 2021, nine vaulters and two decathletes will take the runway in Tokyo with an ESSX pole to plant in the box and hopefully take them to Olympic medal heights.

From the USA, four of the six Olympic pole vaulters are ESSX users: Katie Nageotte, Morgann Leleux, Chris Nilsen, and Sam Kendricks. Other Olympic athletes include: Valentin Lavillenie – France; Ruby Peinado - Venezuela; Seito Yamamoto - Japan; Maryna Kylypko - Ukraine; Zach Ziemek, Team USA decathlete, and Damien Warner, decathlete, Canada.

In a press conference anticipating the Olympic Trials, Katie Nageotte said, “The ESSX pole allows me to get upside down more quickly and stay upside down longer.”

Katie won the Olympic Trials, and is the most recent athlete to join the ESSX family. The poles appear to have been made for her style of jumping. Since switching, Katie has improved her indoor and outdoor personal bests to 4.94 (16’2.5) and 4.95 (16’2.75)”. Last month, she attempted the indoor and outdoor world records, and breaking them looks not only possible but imminent.

The Olympic meets are not the only place we see more black and yellow being slid out of pole bags. At the North Carolina High School State Championships, about half of the vaulters jumped on ESSX, and in our own club, Pole Vault Carolina, we have grown from 10 ESSX poles in 2015 to 100 + today. We are home to 25 state champions.

The new partnership reimagined their product and their ethos. They considered how to help vaulters reach their highest heights as they themselves sought their next level as a company. Knowing that the future of the sport lies in the clubs, ESSX set affordable price points early on, and built trust with club coaches who are bringing up the next generation of vaulters. Their goal was to get the poles into the hands of young athletes and see what they could do.

A cooperative working spirit makes it easy to bring new ideas to fruition and get things done for their athletes, like having a back-up plan for every Olympian’s poles.

Traveling with poles is an exercise in anxiety. ESSX is proactive. They have built duplicates of every Olympian’s must-have poles, and identified a group of masters’ athletes who are on standby to travel to Tokyo at a moment’s notice should anyone’s poles be damaged en route to the Games.

ESSX serves the sport. While their product is a vaulting pole, their service is trustworthiness and reliability. At ESSX, the decision-making table is round; everyone has a say, and each team member interacts with sponsored athletes. In an environment of open-endedness and respect, lies the groundwork for something swifter, higher, and stronger to occur, another Olympic medal.

But the team concentrates on delivering the best product so vaulters can soar. And when you anticipate the customers first, and pay attention to what they need, success is sure to follow.

Photo credit: ESSX