By Emma Gonosey
Exec. Sports Editor
Junior Joah Lee has found her passion in competitive pole vaulting.
Lee has only been pole vaulting since her freshman year at Costa, but has since dedicated time and effort into improving her skills as a vaulter. She competes in around six meets each season, and trains for most of the week.
“I started [pole vaulting] my freshman year,” said junior Joah Lee. “I honestly went in not knowing anything about the sport, but my friends were in the event, and encouraged me to join. I was hesitant about it in the beginning but I really enjoyed how unique [it was], and the thrill of the sport.”
Although she has only been vaulting for about three years, Lee feels that it has already become a large part of her life. According to Lee, she had to quickly adapt to the nature of the sport, but has since improved greatly, in all aspects of pole vaulting.
“I’ve definitely exerted a lot of time since the beginning,” Lee said. “I would spend a lot of time after school to improve since it took me a while to pick up the sport, and [I] still do so now.”
Lee trains similarly to most athletes, working hard to improve her skills as both an athlete and a pole vaulter. In a typical week, she practices four days a week working on both strength and vaulting, for around two hours a day. However, when she has a competition coming up, she spends most of her time practicing her vaults.
“Currently we practice Monday through Thursday, from around 3 to 5,” Lee said. “Certain days we focus on conditioning to improve our strength, speed, and technique. Other days, and usually the week of the meet, we spend most of practice vaulting.”
Since the COVID-19 outbreak, Lee had to make many changes to the way she trained for competitions. Her team had to stop practicing altogether, forcing her to stop vaulting for the first half of her season. When she returned to practice, there were many new rules and regulations the team had to follow, including new sanitizing rules and distanced practices.
“After we were allowed to start vaulting [again], we put a lot of effort into sanitizing the pit frequently,” Lee said. “Probably the most difficult part was the limitation of our practice initially. We were unable to vault for all of the first semester.”
While she spends countless hours training to improve her pole vaulting skills, Lee has also had to train herself to have the right mentality going into competitions. She has had to correct her past mistakes, and learn from them while competing.
“Pole vault is particularly about mentality,” Lee said. “[I] have to focus on correcting and exerting the correct techniques that will help me vault higher.”
According to Lee, pole vaulting competitions can get extremely intense, and it takes practice to have the right mindset. However, it all proves to be worth it to her, as she loves the competitive nature of pole vaulting.
“Competing brings a thrill of pressure that practice doesn’t bring,” Lee said. “The goal in pole vault is really clear and immediate, so when I accomplish vaulting over my goal height it’s an amazing feeling.”
While Lee plans on continuing her pole vaulting career throughout high school, she is still debating whether or not she wants to pursue a higher level of competition.
“I definitely plan to pole vault for the rest of high school,” Lee said. “I am not at the level of competing competitively in college, but I definitely want to continue to practice in the future.”
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