nationals winner 8 months after taking up the sport?

[polevaultpower]

But you have to admit it's slightly suspicious when an athlete sets such a huge mark in a small local meet and doesn't come within a foot of it for the remainder of the season.

Well I wasn't there. But I've seen her jump at indoor and outdoor NAIAs, and have no doubt that she legitimately cleared 15'. She is a stud athlete who has a ton of potential as a pole vaulter.

And she did clear within 9" of it indoors, so it's not like she's a 13 footer that popped 15' out of nowhere.

[Jon]

But you have to admit it's slightly suspicious when an athlete sets such a huge mark in a small local meet and doesn't come within a foot of it for the remainder of the season.

Well I wasn't there. But I've seen her jump at indoor and outdoor NAIAs, and have no doubt that she legitimately cleared 15'. She is a stud athlete who has a ton of potential as a pole vaulter.

And she did clear within 9" of it indoors, so it's not like she's a 13 footer that popped 15' out of nowhere.

The same could be said of Ivet Lalova. She's clearly talented, could potentially one day run in the region of 10.8, and came within 0.2 of her 10.77, but that doesn't stop her mark from stinking!

If the IAAF accepted the 10.77, it makes you wonder how whiffy the 4.57m must have been for them not to accept it. :?

[Powell]

And she did clear within 9" of it indoors, so it's not like she's a 13 footer that popped 15' out of nowhere.

True. It's like she's a 14 footer that popped 15' out of nowhere

9 inches is still a huge improvement - more than 5%. That's not to say an athlete can't improve by a big margin, especially if she has so little experience in the event, but why did she never get anywhere near that mark again?

Then again, maybe the international statisticians missed other marks by her this season? The only outdoor results that Tilastopaja lists for her in 2005 are 4.26 on 22 April and 4.20 on 20 May. It's hard to believe she only competed 3 times outdoors. Do you know anything of her other competitions?

[tafnut]

If the IAAF accepted the 10.77, it makes you wonder how whiffy the 4.57m must have been for them not to accept it. :?

Whiffy?
I believe the mark (it's not like she taped the bar and put it on extra long pegs as some El Pasoans were wont to do), but the fact of the matter is, I look at a mark like this as I do Jonesboro marks - they really did jump that high, but it's more like a practice than a real meet. You can have a meet a week and eventually you'll sky one.

[Powell]

it's not like she taped the bar and put it on extra long pegs as some El Pasoans were wont to do

I'm not suggesting that's what she did, but all sorts of other things can happen at a small local meet. The officials might have misread the measure by a foot or the result might have been misreported (I remember a case here where a young female athlete was reported to have cleared 1.90 - a huge PB - at a small meet and it only turned out much later that the results were entered manually into the computer by a person who had little experience with T&F and the mark was actually 1.80!). Not to mention small things like downhill runways, irregular poles etc...

And BTW, why didn't Stuczynski compete in the Nationals?

[polevaultpower]

9 inches is still a huge improvement - more than 5%. That's not to say an athlete can't improve by a big margin, especially if she has so little experience in the event, but why did she never get anywhere near that mark again?

Then again, maybe the international statisticians missed other marks by her this season? The only outdoor results that Tilastopaja lists for her in 2005 are 4.26 on 22 April and 4.20 on 20 May. It's hard to believe she only competed 3 times outdoors. Do you know anything of her other competitions?

None of the Suhr Sports girls competed much outdoors.

----------------------------------
AMC Championships (Cedarville, OH)
----------------------------------
men's vault held indoors due to inclement weather
1 Stuczynski, Jen SR Roberts Wesleyan 14-00.00 4.27m

--------------------------------
NCCAA Championships (Marion, IN)
--------------------------------

1 Stuczynski, Jen SR Roberts Wesleyan 14-02.00 4.31m

---------------------------------------
RWC Raider Invitational (Rochester, NY)
---------------------------------------

1 Jen Stuczynski Roberts Wesleyan 13-06.00 4.11m

===========================
NAIA National Championships
===========================

-- Jen Stuczynski SR Roberts Wesleyan NH


I was also competing at NAIAs. It was a big field, about 30 girls. Jen finished warming up, and it was something ridiculous like 4 hours until she came in. The bar started at 3.35 (~11') and went up 10cm at a time (~4"). She didn't come in until 3.95.

Her normal coach (Rick Suhr) wasn't there, it was just her school coach. He didn't have her drop her grip or move her run or go down a pole. She had trouble getting in the pit.


Why did she never jump another 15 footer... did she even jump in any meets after that? She really didn't jump in that many meets outdoors. None of the Suhr Sports girls went to USA Nationals.

[polevaultpower]

If the IAAF accepted the 10.77, it makes you wonder how whiffy the 4.57m must have been for them not to accept it. :?

They probably never submitted the mark to the IAAF. Jen did not compete at USAs or go to Europe. Somehow I don't think they were too concerned about IAAF rankings.

[polevaultpower]

Not to mention small things like downhill runways, irregular poles etc...

Irregular poles? Are you kidding me??? There are almost zero rules concerning what is a legal pole. You can pretty much use whatever you want.

[gh]

Incidentally - is this 4.57 mark really true? IAAF lists have her SB at just 4.20, Tilastopaja gives 4.26.

IAAF and Tilastopaja both basically take their lead from T&FN on U.S. marks... takes a lot longer for smaller meets to filter through the system.

[decamouse]

magic pixie dust

must have been the magic pixie dust put in the poles - she also now has a series of 15' poles - not sure if she used them - honking tail wind! - yes I know it was indoors - must have left the doors on the building open- 14' 7 1/4" was listed (4.45m) - December 17 - guess by the end of Feb. you will have more info.

[polevaultsupporter]

Suhr and Jen Stuczynski

After reading the comments about the new wonder....I had to go and look for history of vaulters at Suhr Sports and after reading this article, I think it is more than just having exceptional athletes:

This information was printed in the Buffalo News:

“MASKULINSKI'S ACHIEVEMENTS WORTH JUMPING FOR JOY ABOUT”
January 5, 2003
The Buffalo News
BOBDICESARE

Tiffany was nothing special. She ranked about 10th in last year's Section VI championships. She loved the sport much more than the sport loved her. Or so it was, right up until last summer, at which time a transformation of unimaginable proportions began to occur. Tiffany joined some other area vaulters in taking private lessons from Churchville's Rick Suhr, the 1998 U.S. Masters vaulting champion. Three days a week, leaving Elma with a parent at 4:30 p.m., returning at 10, Tiffany learned the art of the vault in Suhr's 4,000-square foot indoor facility outside Rochester. Suhr had worked wonders with a number of Western New York high school athletes. Seventeen times his students have placed at the states. He has seen vaulters improve in dramatic fashion, but he had never seen anything like this. Suhr will have another Tiffany
Maskulinski just as soon as Butch Harmon has another Tiger Woods. Tiffany, 16 and a sophomore at Iroquois, was clearing 8 feet when she met up with Suhr in July. Just before Christmas, in a meet at Fredonia State, she cleared 12-3/4 to break the state high school indoor record. Last spring, she ranked 10th in the section. Right now she stands No. 1 -- in the nation. No other high school female in the land has gone higher. She cleared 12-2 in Toronto, and if she were a senior she'd have her pick of the best college track programs in the country. "This girl is a remarkable story," Suhr says. "I've had a lot of great kids, but her overachievement is incredible. Sophomores don't jump that high. I would have been happy with 10 feet at this point. For her to be jumping 12 feet would be like a high school guy jumping 16 as a sophomore. It would be unheard of." "I was hoping," Tiffany says, "that by my senior year I'd be going 12 feet. I just kept listening to my coach, and each month I improved by a foot." She's become the darling of the Western New York track scene, the athlete everyone wants to glimpse. And when they do, when they first lay eyes on her, they swear there must be a mistake. The typical pole vaulter is on the tall side and powerfully built. Tiffany is 5-foot-3, weighs 115 pounds. Says Suhr: "A lot of people look at her and it's like, 'That's the girl?' People enjoy watching her because she's so small in size." Her story would be a marvel if that's all there was to it, if it was no more than a tale of a diminutive vaulter attaining inconceivable heights by developing a technical proficiency beyond her years. But there's more to it than that. There are days, too many days, when Tiffany has to will herself through a practice or a competition, conquer the pain before taking aim at the bar. She suffers from scoliosis, a curvature of the spine, wore a back brace in seventh and eighth grades, reaped no improvement. She's an early riser without need of an alarm clock, awakes when her back screams out in the early hours of the morning. Some nights she barely sleeps at all. "Some days it's good. Some days it's bad. Some days it's really bad," Tiffany says. "It just depends what day it is." Tiffany will undergo extensive surgery to alleviate her condition. Doctors plan to move her right lung aside, remove four discs from her spine, replace them with a metal rod. She'll be in intensive care for two days, in a brace for three months, might well be sidelined from the vault throughout her junior year. Yet when she looks down that tunnel all she sees is a sun shining in the distance. "I'm not going to be in pain anymore," she says. And you wonder where she'll take it from there.

I guess we know where Suhr took it from there..... He knows the sport and knows how to train athletes