Responding to safety concerns in the wake of the death of Kevin Dare last year, the sport of pole vaulting has undergone several important changes during the past year in an effort to improve the safety of the competitors.
On Feb. 23, 2002, Dare, then a 19-year-old Penn State sophomore, was competing in the pole vault at the Big Ten Indoor Track and Field Championships at the University of Minnesota Field House when he fell while attempting a vault. Witnesses said that he appeared to become disoriented while in the air, causing him to fall. Dare was later taken to Hennepin County Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead due to fatal head trauma.
Dare's death came just days after 16-year-old Jesus Queseda of Clewiston H.S. in Florida died as a result of injuries suffered in a pole vault competition. Then, on April 1, Samoa Fili, a 17-year-old at Wichita Southeast H.S. in Kansas, became the third vaulter to die within a span of less than four months.
"When people die, things have to change," said Duer Sharp, a sports management administrator with the Big Ten Conference who works with track and field. "[Safety regulations] are still in the works, but when you have the number of deaths, not only in college, but in high school, you have to change."
Following Dare's death, his father, Ed Dare, worked closely with Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley and several track and field representatives to implement new safety regulations in pole vaulting.
Some of the changes adopted for the 2003 season included increasing the size of the landing pad, or "pit," from a minimum 16 feet by 12 feet to 19 feet 6 inches in width and 16 feet 5 inches from the back of the vaulting box; instituting a mandatory clinic for pole vaulters and coaches, the first one of which took place at Penn State last December; and the implementation of a mandatory waiver which each vaulter must sign before competing that acknowledges the risks involved in the sport.
Penn State men's track and field coach Harry Groves, who has been coaching the Nittany Lions for 33 years, said that the most important aspect of the new regulations was the mandatory clinic. So, too, did Idaho State track and field coach Dave Nielsen.
Nielsen, a 20-year veteran at Idaho State who was a Big Ten pole vault champion and All-American at Iowa, a competitor at the 1976 Olympic Trials and who coached Stacy Dragila -- the current women's world-record holder in the pole vault -- said the new safety regulations are a great advancement. However, he also said that sometimes the immense amount of padding might provide a false sense of security for the vaulter.
"When I vaulted, we were so excited to have anything out there," he said. "Sometimes you make a bigger, better area out there and you lose focus on the issue of safety."
Neilsen said he was one of the biggest advocates of the landing zone, a brightly-colored area marked in the center of the pit to give the vaulter a target for which to aim. He said that another important aspect of the sport was the helmet, something he wants his kids to wear when they pole vault in high school competitions.
The issue of a helmet has been a sticking point in many discussions of pole vault safety. While on the surface it may seem like a good idea, there is no helmet currently designed specifically for pole vaulting. Furthermore, Groves said that no helmet had proven effective for falls over six feet, a necessity in a sport that routinely features jumps higher than 15 feet. Adding to the problem is the possibility for the vaulter to become disoriented. Perhaps the biggest sticking point, however, is the liability issue.
"I don't think you can [make a helmet mandatory] because of liability issues," Sharp said. "If we do say, 'We back that helmet,' and then someone falls and gets hurt, that conference is liable."
Regardless of the potential benefits and problems with helmets, the coaches were unified in their praise for the ban on "tapping." A controversial practice for years in which a coach would give a vaulter a boost in practice by placing his hand in the middle of the athlete's back and giving an extra push and support as the vaulter took off, tapping was banned in last summer's legislative sweep.
The most adamant in his denouncement of tapping was Indiana head track and field coach Marshall Goss, who has coached some of the most successful pole-vaulters in the nation. Perhaps the most notable of these vaulters was Dave Volz, a former American record-holder and 1992 Olympian. Goss said that the false sense of security tapping provided an athlete was one of the most detrimental coaching practices in existence.
"That's a great, great rule and one that I've been after for many years," Goss said.
Without a coach to help the vaulter, he said, the athlete's advantage is gone in competition.
"Now the kid's lost his blanket and thumb -- Linus isn't there. Don't ever put something false into an event."
With the new safety regulations coming into existence just last summer, Sharp cautioned it was too early for any specific statistics concerning participation rate or helmet use. While there was no unanimous opinion as to whether or not the new equipment and standards would price pole vaulting out of competition for some schools, they said that the increased pit size and regulations were necessary.
While all of the coaches said the regulations were necessary, Nielsen said that just realizing the danger and acknowledging the safety concerns is one of the best things that could have happened.
"[The regulations] do two things. One is to provide the safeguards that were missing," Nielsen said, "and two was that all of them create more focus on the sport and the issue of safety. Education is ultimately the best way to go about it."
