Two years ago Tori Anthony of Woodside tried pole vaulting for the very first time at a summer track camp. She decided she liked the event, and last month Tori, a 17-year-old student at Castilleja School, vaulted to the USA Junior National Track and Field championship.
Tori will compete in the Junior World Championships in Beijing, China, next month.
The journey from raw beginner to national champion and Tori’s style as a pole vaulter can be described in much the same way — fast and aiming for the stratosphere.
At her first competition, the January 2005 annual National Pole Vault Summit in Reno, Tori surprised coach Scott Slover by vaulting nearly a foot higher than she’d ever done in practice. Slover says the 10 feet, 4-1/2 inch vault would have qualified her for the Central Coast Section (CCS) divisional meet, yet she had taken up pole vaulting only a few months earlier and had been practicing just one day a week while she played water polo.
Months later, at the end of her first season of competition, Tori won second place at CCS and placed fourth at the state track and field meet, with a best of 12 feet, 8 inches.
This year her progress was even more phenomenal, even though Castilleja’s West Bay Athletic League does not have pole vaulting as an event. Tori won several invitational meets and then won the CCS championship with a meet record 13-foot vault before winning the state title at 13 feet, 3 inches. While pole vaulters get three tries at each height, in the state meet Tori did not miss a single vault until, after having already won the event, she tried for a personal record of 13 feet, 7 inches.
“That was such a fun meet,” Tori says. “Everything flowed.”
Next was the national championship in Indianapolis, where Tori’s competitors included three girls who had vaulted higher than she had.
Even Coach Slover says that while he knew Tori could win, he did not expect her to. Both thought coming in even second would require her to jump higher than she ever had. Conditions were less than perfect — lightning delayed the pole vaulting until 7:15 pm and then cancelled it until the next day.
But the adverse conditions — on the second night it was hot, humid and windy — actually pleased Coach Slover, who says he knew that weather has little effect on Tori’s performance.
“She’s mentally very tough,” Coach Slover says. “That you can’t coach.”
Tori’s win at 13 feet, 1 inch was almost anti-climactic. Confused because the heights at the meet were measured metrically, Tori thought she’d already cleared that height.
Coach Slover says Tori made her winning jump by a wide margin.
“She made 13 (feet), 1-1/2 (inches) by 9 inches,” he says.
Early athlete
Tori’s background has more than a little to do with her pole vaulting success. At the age of 5 she began serious gymnastics. By the end of her freshman year, she was only two levels below the “elite” level at which she would have competed internationally.Tori practiced 4-1/2 hours a day, five days a week, plus competitions, and often ate and did homework in the car.
In her freshman year Tori won first place in the state for balance beam and was third all-around, only missing first place because she fell on a dismount, something she rarely did in competition.
Gymnastics, Tori says, was something “I really did like,” but by the end, “I really wasn’t enjoying the sport any more.” She broke her foot in a freak accident on the balance beam in her freshman year, which gave her some time off to think about it.
She also grew 2 inches that year. World class gymnasts are rarely taller than 5 feet, 4 inches, Tori says. Everyone knew Tori would be tall. Her father, Tom Anthony, is a former San Jose State football player and her brother Tyler is 6 feet, 3 inches and also a football player, at the University of Pennsylvania. Tori is now 5 feet, 7 inches.
Height, however, is a plus for pole vaulters. Coach Slover says Tori’s gymnastics background, combined with her height and speed, make Tori a natural pole vaulter. He also lauds her consistency, which allows her to make small adjustments with big results.
While her parents counseled Tori against leaving gymnastics, where she was probably guaranteed a college scholarship, Tori told her mother that she’d just get one in another sport.
Over the summer she went to track camp and played tennis and water polo to see what sport that might be.
“She has the ultimate confidence in herself,” says her mom, Joyce Anthony.
Tori took up track and water polo, where she played goalie on the varsity team this year. In addition to pole vaulting, she has won league championships in the 100- and 300-meter hurdles, the 200 and the long jump.
Tori is now being courted by a number of prestigious schools, included all her top four choices. She says she will probably sign with a school by October, and find herself in the enviable position of already having been accepted into college at a time when most seniors are still filling out applications.
Another big factor in Tori’s success is her coach. Slover, a Los Gatos resident, was himself a star high school and UCLA pole vaulter who won the national junior championship. He coaches with and takes advice from his father, Bob Slover, who coached him. Both Slovers qualified for the Olympic trials.
Scott Slover, who also has a full-time job as the director of business development for a company that manufactures clean room equipment, has a personal record of 18 feet, 10 inches and still competes.
Attitude is an important part of Tori’s success. Although Tori trains seriously and works hard to be very good at her sport, having fun while doing it is important to her.
After winning the CCS title, she and second-place winner Natasha Barthel of St. Francis High School, another former gymnast who Slover also trains, did back flips off the awards stand. Tori, showing common sense, stepped down from the first place podium to the lower third place level before the flip.
Her mother, who tries to attend and videotape all of Tori’s meets, says she doesn’t worry too much about her daughter flying over bars at more than 13 feet. “I was afraid when she was on a 4-inch beam,” she says.
Although Tori says — “All my friends keep asking for tickets for when I’m in the Olympics” — she knows that goal is still far away. Only three American women qualify in the pole vault and women’s pole vaulting has only been an Olympic event since 2000.
In the meantime, Coach Slover believes Tori can vault to 14 feet, 6 inches next year as she continues reaching for stratosphere.
Barbara Wood is a freelance writer, photographer and gardener from Woodside.
The brief history of women’s pole vaulting
Women’s pole vaulting is very young sport. It first became an Olympic event six years ago, in the 2000 Summer Games. American Stacy Dragila won the first women’s pole-vaulting gold medal with a vault of 15 feet, 1 inch.Only six years earlier, as a junior in college, Dragila had set an American record by vaulting 10 feet.
Today the world record for women’s pole vaulting is 16 feet, 5 inches, held by Russian Yelena Isinbayeva. Like Tori Anthony, both Dragila and Isinbayeva are former gymnasts, as are many male pole vaulters.
The first national championship in women’s pole vault was in 1997. Dragila won that title with a vault of 14 feet, 5-1/4 inches, a height Tori Anthony’s coach, Scott Slover, believes she will be able to surpass by next year.
Women had been barred from pole vaulting because it was believed they lacked the upper body strength and mental toughness needed for the sport.
