VAULTER’S INDECISION SOAR POINT NO MORE
Rancho Bernardo junior focused on keeping state title
When Ashley Callahan went out for the pole vault her freshman year, she lasted one day.
A gymnast most of her life, she shifted to the Rancho Bernardo High gymnastics team the next day and soon remembered why she left the sport. She just didn’t like it. After a week, she went back to coach Tom Martin and asked if he’d let her back on the track team.
“I had never done that, let someone back who came and then walked away, missing the entire first week,” said Martin, a well-known high school pole vaulting guru. “So, I asked my wife, Theresa, what she thought. I laid out how good I thought Ashley could be, but I’m one who follows the rules. I’m old-school — and there’s the aspect of fairness to the others who stuck it out.
“She told me, ‘She’s a teenager, they change their minds. Lighten up.’ ”
So he did. A little. “That day before she left we’d had a three-hour, pressure-free workout,” he said. “They never stepped on the runway. But there was something there with Ashley. It was the aggressiveness, the confidence, the way she did everything. You’d tell her once and she did it and if she didn’t, she would the second time.
“I thought, ‘This is a real athlete.’ I’ve had national record-holders like Tracy O’hara and I thought Ashley might be just as good, even better. But the second day she wasn’t there, so I called her dad and he said she decided to do gymnastics. It happens.”
Martin said when Callahan returned, there was no party, no celebration.
“When she showed up on Saturday I told her she’d missed a week and I wasn’t even going to coach her that day, that she had to figure out by the end of practice if she wanted to be on the team or not. That day she not only stayed with everyone who’d been there a week, she went past them.”
So Martin wasn’t in the least surprised when Callahan captured the state championship last June as a sophomore, the only one to clear 13-4 after equaling the San Diego Section record of 13-6, set by Westview’s Kortney Ross in 2010, at the Mt. SAC Relays.
Callahan entered this season thinking she could improve on the section record, probably push it to 14 feet.
But one of the girls she beat in Clovis, Paige Sommers of Westlake Village Westlake, raised the bar. Literally.
In the first meet of the 2020 season, Sommers soared 14-6 and had a solid attempt at 14-9, the national high school record.
“At first I thought, ‘Oh, my God, that’s a foot PR.’ That’s insane,” said Callahan, 16, who carries a 3.65 GPA. “I stayed awake Sunday night thinking about it, but by Monday I was motivated. Now, 14 feet is still my goal, but by the end of the season I want 14-6 or better. Whatever it takes to defend my state title.
“I’m on a bigger pole now and I’m motivated — really motivated. Paige is a friend and I congratulate her. We’re both juniors and I love that competition.”
Realize that just a few months ago, Callahan won at the Pole Vault Summit in Reno at 13-4, beating most of the nation’s best. Among her victims — Sommers.
It’s not that she’ll lack local competition, either, as 13-footer Katerina Adamiec of Poway and 12-6 vaulter Maya Grudman of Sage Creek, both state qualifiers, return within the section to provide plenty of push.
But nothing like Callahan hopes to see at meets like the Mt. Carmel, Arcadia Invitational, Mt. SAC and the state meet where she hopes to go where no San Diego girls pole vaulter has ever gone.
Brand is a freelance writer.