Saloga, Spencer take home top prizes at Windy City Pole Vault Summit

By Michael Newman

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Rolling Meadows – Marmion Academy’s Andrew Saloga and Zach Frye of Lake Park had to wait almost 90 minutes before they could enter the Boys competition at Saturday’s Windy City Pole Vault Summit in the Rolling Meadows High School Fieldhouse at their opening height of 14’ 6”. When they did, the two seniors put on a memorable show with both clearing 16’ 0”. Saloga won the competition on fewer misses.

RESULTS

The Pole Vault community is a unique collection of athletes that soar through the air to clear a bar closer to the heavens. There is a closeness to the group. Regardless of school, they cheer each other on congratulating each other on a personal best. There were a lot of those in both the Boys and Girls portions of the meet. After the congratulations, the vaulter turns back on his concentration to fearlessly go over the bar.

Colton Naftziger of Normal University was one of those athletes that had a dream night finishing fourth clearing 14’ 9”. He entered the meet with a personal best 14-0. He cleared that height on his third attempt, cleared 14-3 on his first attempt for PR #1, cleared 14’ 6” on his final try, and then cleared 14’ 9” on his second attempt to establish his third of his personal bests.

Aassav Shah of Dunlap competes with reckless abandon at the same time a passion for the event. He is close to 5’ 6” tall. Common sense states that he should not be vaulting that high. He ignores that as he showed on Saturday when he tied his personal best of 15’ 0” finishing third.

The waiting was the hardest part for the two big guns in this competition Saloga and Frye as they missed on their first attempt of the night at 14’ 6”. Saloga collected himself and cleared at 14’ 6”. Frye was vaulting on a high wire where he could have been out of the competition early. He cleared on his final attempt at 14’ 6” keeping himself in the competition.

Saloga was perfect after that clearing his opening attempts at 15’ 0” and 15’ 6”. It was the opposite for Frye, the defending Class 3A state champion, who needed a third attempt to clear 15’ 0”.

This was the second meet of the weekend for the Lake Park senior. The night before at Batavia, he cleared a school record of 15’ 10.25” to win the event using nine attempts at heights in that event. He also had six attempts in the Long Jump. He was not coming in at 100%, but you have to do those kind of things when you get to May and the state meet.

Frye was finding ways to will himself to get over that bar. He put the pressure on Saloga clearing 15’ 6” on his second attempt. Saloga was perfect at his first attempt at 16’ 0”. Frye missed at his first two attempts. On his final attempt at that height, he just made it over the bar establishing a new personal best and school record for the second time in 24 hours.

The bar was raised to 16’ 5”. It was a height that Saloga had attempted before. Frye would be trying that height for the first time on his 13th attempt of the night. Both athletes did not clear that height giving Saloga the win on fewer misses. That did not diminish the electricity the two athletes created at the end of this meet.

As Saloga was nearly perfect in the Boys Meet, Samantha Spencer of Providence Catholic was perfect in defending the title that she won in 2019.

The Girls competition came down to four athletes. Both Kelsey Rothas of Lake Zurich and Lillianna Ifft of Bloomington cleared 11’ 6” to tie for third-place.

Yasmin Ruff of Oak Park-River Forest was the chief competition for the defending champion. Ruff cleared her opening height of 11’ 0”, then 11’ 6”. Spencer looked effortless on clearing her first three attempts at 11’ 6”, 12’ 0”, and 12’ 6”. Ruff had trouble at 12’ 0” but cleared that height on her final attempt to stay in the competition. She responded by clearing a new personal best and school record of 12’ 6” on her next attempt putting the “pressure” on Spencer.

That word pressure was a foreign word to Spencer on this night as she cleared that height and 12’ 9” again on her first attempts. Ruff’s night was over after she missed three times at 12’ 9”.

Spencer had the bar raised to 13’ 2” to try to surpass the meet record that she set last year of 13’ 1.25”.

She had three good attempts at the height failing to clear the bar. Nevertheless, she left Rolling Meadows with another Windy City Pole Vault Summit championship.