Her Royal "Highness", Jenn Stuczynski, looks for another national title

For Immediate Release
Monday, February 21, 2009
Contact:
Jill M. Geer
Director of Communications
USA Track & Field
508.520.1529; Jill.Geer@usatf.org


Her Royal "Highness", Jenn Stuczynski, looks for another national title


BOSTON - The reigning Royal Highness of the women's pole vault, Jenn Stuczynski won her first career national title at the 2005 USA Indoor Championships at the Reggie Lewis Track & Athletic Center. In Boston this weekend at the 2009 edition of the meet, she's looking for her fourth indoor national title, seventh national title overall and possibly another American record at what has proven to be one of her favorite venues.

She's also looking for an Indoor Visa Championship to go along with the outdoor overall Visa Championship she won in 2008. She likely will enter the meet atop the Visa Championship Series point standings, with 1,197 points.

When Stucyznski won the women's vault at the 2005 USA Indoor Championships with a clearance of 4.35m/14-3.25, her coach had to tell announcers who she was and how to pronounce her name. (It's Stuh-ZINN-ski). A basketball player at tiny Roberts Wesleyan college in Rochester, N.Y., the nearly 6-foot-tall Stuczynski was discovered by vaulting coach Rick Suhr, whose enclave of vaulters in upstate New York was famous for practicing in an unheated Quonset hut.

Since then, she has become a household name not just in women's vaulting, but in all of track and field. Now 27 years old, Stuczynski rose quickly through the ranks of her event, winning the 2006 USA Outdoor title and the 2007 USA Indoor and Outdoor crowns. She broke out from the shadow of pioneering women's pole vault icon Stacy Dragila when she broke Dragila's American record outdoors in 2007, topping out at 4.88 meters, which converts to 16 feet even.

In 2008, Stuczynski got her season off to a great start by winning the silver medal at the World Indoor Championships in Valencia, Spain. She continued to make American records outdoors a way of life, breaking her own record at the adidas Track Classic in Carson, California (4.90m/16-0.75) and improving it to 4.92m/16-01.75 at the Olympic Trials.

It was at the Olympic Trials that Stuczynski's Olympic dreams stood on the precipice. By the time she took her first jump of the competition, at 4.60m/15-1.25, only two other athletes remained. Stuczynski missed her first two attempts at the height, and if she missed her third, there would be no Beijing. She not only cleared it, but went on to break her American record. Her clearance made her the #2 vaulter of all time, behind only world record holder Yelena Isinbayeva of Russia, and gave her the women's outdoor Visa Championship.

In Beijing, she cemented her status by taking the silver medal with a clearance of 4.80m/15-9, behind Isinbayeva's gold-medal, world-record jump of 5.05m/16-6.75, continuing an exciting rivalry in women's track and field and introducing Stuczynski to a new level of stress-management.

"You have to go through the Trials and you have to qualify, first, in the U.S., and that's stressful," Stuczynski recalled earlier this year. "As you know, I was on my third attempt at the opening height (at the Olympic Trials). I almost had a chance of not going. Then you go to the Olympics and the whole experience is mind-blowing. Until you've been in it, you really don't understand it."

Stuczynski understands winning, and her 2009 indoor season is off to a great start, winning all three Visa Championship Series meets - the 102nd Millrose Games, Reebok Boston Indoor Games and Tyson Invitational. She has taken attempts at American-record heights at all three meets, and at the Reebok Boston Indoor Games at "The Reggie," she finally took the indoor AR from Dragila by clearing 4.82m/15-9.75.

Yet even the most dominant American of the last three seasons has to overcome doubts on the runway. "I didn't know if I was going to do well," she said after her indoor American record. "I didn't have a feeling about it going into this meet. It was a big question mark. I think it was a relief. It's a mental game you play with yourself. I've tried this so many times (to break the record) and I wanted to make it today."

At the USA Indoor Championships, Stuczynski will face a field that includes the resurgent Dragila, who at age 37 is competing in her final season. Dragila has been second to Stuczynski at each Visa championship Series meet in 2009, including a jump of 4.61m/15-1.5 at Millrose.
But if Stuczynski is on form, there is no American who can catch her.

Now the question is: how high can she go?

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