After advancing to the NCAA indoor national championships in February, Kristina Owsinski is seeking her first trip to outdoor nationals this spring.
Washington has two meets remaining — a dual Saturday against Washington State and next week’s Ken Shannon Invitational, both at Dempsey — before the Pacific-12 Conference championships May 16-17 at UCLA in Los Angeles followed by NCAA regionals May 28-30 in Austin, Texas, and nationals June 10-13 in Eugene, Ore.
NCAA competition is split into two regions, west and east. The top 48 vaulters in each region compete. The top 12 from each regional meet — based solely on that competition, regardless of previous results — advance to the national championships.
Owsinski was third in the Pac-12 as a redshirt freshman then ninth as a sophomore on an off day resulting in her lowest clearance of the season. At NCAA regionals, she placed 16th in 2013 and tied for 17th last year. She tied for ninth at the NCAA indoor championships March 14 in Fayetteville, Ark.
After advancing to the NCAA indoor national championships in February, Kristina Owsinski is seeking her first trip to outdoor nationals this spring.
Washington has two meets remaining -- a dual Saturday against Washington State and next week's Ken Shannon Invitational, both at Dempsey -- before the Pacific-12 Conference championships May 16-17 at UCLA in Los Angeles followed by NCAA regionals May 28-30 in Austin, Texas, and nationals June 10-13 in Eugene, Ore.
NCAA competition is split into two regions, west and east. The top 48 vaulters in each region compete. The top 12 from each regional meet -- based solely on that competition, regardless of previous results -- advance to the national championships.
Owsinski was third in the Pac-12 as a redshirt freshman then ninth as a sophomore on an off day resulting in her lowest clearance of the season. At NCAA regionals, she placed 16th in 2013 and tied for 17th last year. She tied for ninth at the NCAA indoor championships March 14 in Fayetteville, Ark.
Kristina Owsinski soared higher Saturday than all but one University of Washington women’s pole vaulter ever has.
The Prairie High School graduate cleared 14 feet, 2½ inches for victory at UC San Diego’s Triton Invitational, two inches shy of Logan Miller’s 2012 school record.
It marked the third time in her last six meets that the UW junior has gone higher than 14 feet, and garnered Owsinski honors as Pacific-12 Conference Women’s Field Athlete of the Week.
Success in the event relies on one primary attribute.
“We’re all pretty fearless,” Owsinski said. “It’s kind of that one event that a lot of people are hesitant to try. You kind of have to be a little bit nutty to do pole vault, but it’s a really fun event.”
Owsinski said UW pole vault coach Pat Licari is always looking for those with potential, good attitudes and are willing to try new things.”
“If you trust that he knows what he’s talking about and do everything that you’re there to do, you’re going to jump high,” she said.
Owsinski’s first outlet for her fearlessness was gymnastics before a shoulder injury ended that sport for her. After a year in cheerleading, she went out for track and field. She tried several events, but found one that “just clicked” in pole vault.
“Gymnastics kind of goes hand-in-hand with a lot of other sports,” she said. “It gave me the body awareness and body strength that pole vault requires. Cheer kind of came after gymnastics. It was an outlet for me to still be able to do some tumbling and jumps and flips and stuff.
“It gave me the strength and body awareness to be able to do cheer afterward and then try out for track and try pole vault and be surprisingly OK at it.”
Overcoming injury
By “surprisingly OK,” Owsinski means that she was Class 3A state runner-up in her first season then fourth place as a junior, while also running the 110-meter hurdles at the state meet both years.
Her senior year was cut short by an injury to her left foot — her takeoff foot in pole vault — during a hurdles race shortly after vaulting for her high school of 12-7.
Having competed at indoor meets at UW during her senior season helped her get exposure to college coaches. She got a scholarship despite the season-ending injury.
UW’s coaches were “totally OK” with waiting for the foot to heal. But the jump in intensity from high school training to major college training led to the foot breaking again.
She was diagnosed with multiple stress fractures of the navicular, one of the ankle bones. Screws were inserted during the subsequent surgery, and the foot has remained stable since.
“It was probably a good thing that happened at the beginning of my college career, because ever since surgery, my foot’s been totally fine,” Owsinski said. “It’s held up really well.”
Perhaps the biggest fear people have about the event — the pole snapping — happened to Owsinski when she was a freshman, before re-injuring her foot.
“It wasn’t anything crazy — no serious injuries or anything — but everyone has to break a pole once or twice in their pole vault career,” she said. “It happens. Everything ended up being OK, but it’s a little frightening the first time it happens. You’re trusting in this implement, running full speed and jumping onto the pole and hoping it will swing you over the bar the right way. It definitely takes a lot of mental toughness and a lot of confidence.”
Trending up
After season bests of 12-11 indoors and 13-4¼ outdoors as a redshirt freshman followed by 13-6¼ and 13-3½ as a sophomore, Owsinski’s upward trend has continued.
She cleared 14-2 to win a second consecutive Mountain Pacific Sports Federation indoor title at UW’s Dempsey Indoor facility on Feb. 27, then 14-1¼ in the Huskies’ first outdoor meet of the spring, the Baldy Castillo Invitational at Arizona State on March 21. Her 14-2½ on Saturday in San Diego is a PR for indoor or outdoor.
Results tend to be more consistent in indoor season because of the controlled environment, Owsinski said, but it is nice to compete outside when the weather is good — particularly if vaulters get a tailwind on the runup to the bar.
Owsinski credits training under Licari and her own dedication to maintaining fitness during the offseason for her steady improvement.
“He really knows what he’s looking for in a vault and the technique,” she said of her coach. “It’s kind of reconstructing everything that I had known about pole vault coming out of high school, and strength and conditioning training that we do.
“That all really helped kind of bring it all together. It’s definitely an adjustment that first year. You kind of have to re-learn everything — but once you get it and just keeping working on it in repetition, everything finally makes sense and comes together.”
When Owsinski started vaulting in high school, she said, the hardest part was the swing up from the planted pole to getting her body vertical and up over the bar.
UW is where her training began to focus more on the technique of the runup and planting the pole — “making sure those fundamentals are perfect every time before you even think about the second half of the vault,” she said. “Putting those two things together is still something that I’m definitely working on to make sure that I’m consistent every time.”
