Pole vault medalist high on sport
Sandi Morris ready for U.S. national meet
She has three pet snakes, tons of personality and an Olympic medal — now, can Sandi Morris please get your attention?
Like most people who travel for work, Sandi Morris struggles to find a dog sitter.
The reigning Olympic silver medalist in the women’s pole vault, Morris spends more than 100 nights a year on the road, zigzagging all over the world to compete. As dog owners everywhere know, that’s a lot in boarding fees, or a lot of favors to ask of friends and family. It gets more complicated when you add in her parakeet and lizard.
Fortunately, animal-loving Morris has no problems with her snakes. Yes, that’s snakes, plural.
Morris is the proud owner of three slithering creatures, including a 4 1⁄2- foot ball python (named Fang, after the beloved dog in Harry Potter) that she’s had since the sixth grade.
“Reptiles, and particularly snakes, are the perfect pet for the traveler,” she explained to USA TODAY. “They only need to eat once every two weeks, and because they don’t need daily care, it works out great for me.”
And no, she said, she’s not scared of any of her pets. Fear isn’t an emotion Morris is familiar with, which makes sense, because fearlessness is essential to her sport.
“You have to be pretty crazy to run as fast as you can with this big, bendy pole, and then fling yourself into the air,” said Morris, who will compete this weekend at the USA Track and Field national championships in Des Moines, Iowa. “Pole vault is such an epic sport. I feel like we could be in the X Games if we added another element — like what if we jumped through a flaming hoop?”
It might sound like a ploy to get viewers. And that’s fine with Morris.
Morris, 25, has a bubbly personality, eccentric interests, 68,000 Instagram followers and a personal blog detailing the ups and downs of being a professional athlete, all of which she hopes add up to one — or maybe more accurately 1 million — thing. She wants more eyeballs on her sport.
Being marketable outside of pole vaulting, Morris said, is a “necessary evil of being a professional athlete, especially in a sport that doesn’t get the attention or money of say, professional football.”
“Those guys don’t have to do all the extra stuff that we have to do,” she said. “Track doesn’t get the credit it used to; it’s not held in the same reverence it once was. I want to change that.”
Morris understands that part of the problem is her sport lurks in the shadows 75 percent of the time. Though track is lauded and followed closely in other parts of the world, Americans, for the most part, only pay attention once every four years, when the Olympics air on NBC. And unlike other major sports in the U.S., track meet replays aren’t readily available. People, she believes, become fans of what’s put in front of them.
The public’s general lack of knowledge about her sport — and her accomplishments in it — manifest themselves in other ways.
Morris said when she meets someone new and tells them that she’s a professional pole vaulter, they often smile and say, “No, what do you for money?”
“People don’t understand this is a job,” she said, shaking her head. “You know, I’ve had four guys challenge me to a race, and none of them have beat me. It’s hilarious to me that even now, as an Olympic athlete, a regular guy has challenged me to a footrace and expected to win.”
Racing was how Morris found pole vault. As a 7-year-old on the sideline of her older sister’s soccer game, she paid a little boy 50 cents to race her. She beat him badly, he kept the money and Morris’ parents signed her up for the local track team.
Morris won the 2015 national indoor title at the University of Arkansas, then qualified for the 2016 Olympics. In Rio, she won silver, which filled her with pride even if others didn’t share that emotion.
Track athletes deal with more than just a lack of recognition, Morris said. When people are paying attention during the Olympics, they often think joy can only be found in a gold medal. That’s not the case.
“I think the toughest part of being a professional athlete is not valuing what you did based on what other people say,” Morris explained. “There were so many people who would find out I got silver and say, ‘Awww, man, you almost had it.’ They don’t get it what a huge accomplishment that is. In my mind, I didn’t fail.”
So what’s next for Morris? As one of only a handful of women who have cleared 5 meters (16 feet, 4 inches), she believes the world record of 5.06 meters (16 feet, 6 inches) is up for grabs in the next year or two. The 2018 world indoor champion is also confident that women can clear 17 feet (5.18 meters), which many consider impossible. Her personal-best in competition is 5.00 meters, set in 2016.
But Morris is a believer. What’s more, she’s confident that if more people watched track and field, they would also be believers in her event, but also her sport.
“Think American Ninja Warrior, but with track,’” she said. “If you put us on a TV show, people would love our sport.”