Reaching New Heights
After just three years of competing in pole vault, junior Luke Wuesthoff is already ranked 10th in the state.
Wuesthoff began his track career freshman year as a discus thrower and sprinter and was only introduced to the pole vault later in the season. “I thought it was one of the scariest things I would ever do, but I loved my first practice and decided to pursue it as one of my main events,” Wuesthoff said.
In addition to doing high school track and field, Wuesthoff joined Lucky Strike Vertical Leap, a track and field club team specializing in pole vaulting that practices year round. He started to include club practices into his schedule the summer before his sophomore year to improve as much as possible. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays, he trains four to five hours a day with Brooks Morris, director of Lucky Strike Vertical Leap, to focus on his pole vaulting skills. “I have not always been good at pole vault but I have worked hard to improve my skills to where they are now,” Wuesthoff said.
“Most kids don’t put in the work he does. He really is a great athlete,” Morris added.
In addition to track and field, Wuesthoff also plays football. During the fall season, he still practices with the club team outside of school on a limited scale, due to the high demands of football and school. Although Wuesthoff is one of the best in the state in the pole vault, he doesn’t favor one sport over the other.
“They are so different. In football, it is a full contact sport and you are part of a team of all your friends that makes it really fun. Track is more of an individual sport because your biggest rival is yourself,” Wuesthoff said.
Although “pole vaulting is clearly his best event”, according to Stephen Svoboda, varsity Track and Field coach, Wuesthoff is versatile in competing in any track and field event “which only a few people (are able to) do.” Because of this, he doesn’t practice in one specific group of the team and instead “jumps around a lot … the coaches don’t have a schedule for him so a lot of that he does himself and figures out himself,” according to Svoboda.
Wuesthoff started off the season with a high goal of reaching 15 feet in the pole vault, expecting to greatly improve since last year. However, Wuesthoff started experiencing back spasms earlier this year which became worse after he fell doing hurdles. So far, even with his injury, Wuesthoff has reached a height of 14 feet during a recent meet against Calabasas. This broke the previous school record of 13.8 feet for a junior .
“I had a nice technical jump and I cleared by about six inches. I was very excited,” Wuesthoff said.
“I was very proud of him and how far he has come,” added Morris.
Wuesthoff had an MRI on April 22 to make sure his injury wasn’t serious enough to stop him from continuing in the season. Unfortunately, the doctors took the MRI on the wrong part of his back and nothing was determined from the process. Wuesthoff still plans to attend the Ventura County Championships on May 1 and hopes to get another MRI at a later time. So far, Wuesthoff has been taking it easy to prevent further problems, but believes he can qualify for state this year if his back heals by then.
“I believe he will be able to continue. I don’t foresee there being anything that will stop him from competing the rest of the year,” Morris said.
