MORGANTOWN — On a random afternoon of Morgan Ryan’s freshman year inside the WVU shell building, MHS coach Jeff Core thought why not let some new team members try their hand at pole-vaulting?
One of them was Ryan and she instantly took an interest in the event after her first day of learning to jump. A new experience, combined with a chance to have a positive impact on her team’s success, gave Ryan something to look forward to for the next few years.
“Coach Core brought me in one day and told me to try it out,” Ryan recalled. “I had been talking about wanting to try it because I knew that the pole vault wasn’t a super strong event and if I worked at it I had the potential to do well at the state level and help my team get some points at that level too.”
She thought back to her first meet competing in the event, an indoor meet in Youngstown, Ohio.
“The opening height was set at seven feet, and I no-heighted,” Ryan said. “Then about two weeks later the pandemic hit and everything shut down. One thing in my mind was that I no-heighted at my first meet and I could only go up from that point.”
Morgan said she was fortunate to be able to do some training during the COVID pandemic, but not always doing the actual pole-vaulting event.
“I ran over wickets, which are just cones, to make my run more consistent and work on muscle memory. That’s also when I realized I should probably gain some upper-body strength if I wanted to be a good pole-vaulter, so I started working hard on pull-ups, which I hold the record for in the MHS weight room, by the way,” she said with a chuckle.
Then came her sophomore year and with it, the return of track and field meets. At the first meet of the season, she cleared the eight-foot mark after failing to even clear seven the year before.
“It’s like an addiction, you always want more,” Ryan said.
More success came to open Morgan’s junior track season as she cleared 10 feet at Clay-Battelle in the first meet of the year. She says that was the moment that told her she could compete with the best in the state.
“The feeling probably didn’t click until last year when I jumped ten feet,” she said. “The realization of it clicking is when you really start to reach new heights.”
Ryan set her new personal best of 11 feet early on this season and is looking to push even farther heading into the final third of the year.
“I’ve been doing this long enough to realize that improving your personal best can happen quickly,” Core said. “I’ve also been doing this long enough that it might not happen. But when someone as dedicated as Morgan works as hard as she does, you really never know. If it’s possible, why would we not chase it down.”
Ryan notes she is focusing on improving her level of inversion.
“It’s a huge fear factor sometimes,” she said. “There’s a part of me deep down that knows I have to be completely upside down, eleven feet off the ground, so I can’t be afraid to drop my head and shoulders. It’s normal to be looking back down the runway behind you, but upside-down.
“We are grateful for the program and opportunity here at MHS, the club that Coach Core gives us the chance to do this year-round and now kids can start doing this sooner than when they’re in high school.”
MHS will be competing in Parkersburg this weekend before returning to Mylan Park to participate in the Mountaineer Showcase.
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