Lakeside senior is a natural at pole vault

If there’s one thing Lakeside senior Loreah Winlow has learned during her high school athletic career, it’s that life is full of ups and downs. No surprise there, because Winlow is a pole vaulter for the defending Washington state 1A champion Eagles girls track team.

Not just any pole vaulter, either – she won a gold medal last spring with a vault of 11 feet, 3 inches on her last try, although to secure the title she had to wait for the second-place finisher to miss on her final attempt.

Winlow’s victory came on a particularly stressful afternoon in Tacoma, when a mistimed relay pass sent her into an emotional tailspin from which she had only moments to recover before heading back to the vault runway. But all’s well that ends well, so Winlow and Lakeside went home happy, her win the culmination of an improbable journey.

Winlow was a hurdler in middle school, but it was at a gymnastics practice during her freshman year that track coach Paul Huffman spotted her and hit the recruiting trail.

“She’s a gymnast at heart as so many girl vaulters are,” he said. “The first time I saw her practice, I knew I wanted her to vault. She was just a freshman, but I could see her natural athletic ability.”

Winlow had never thought about vaulting, but friends and teammates suggested that she give it a try. She recalls that she wasn’t all that serious about it as a freshman, with a personal best of 7-6 as she concentrated on other events.

Her “Aha” moment came during her sophomore season when, while recovering from a hip injury, she realized that, if she wanted to get to the state meet, the vault was her best option.

“I knew I couldn’t go back to hurdling,” she said, “so it was all I had left at the time. Our district only had two berths to state, and we had two great vaulters at Lakeside, so my only chance was to meet the qualifying standard.”

That was no small feat. The standard was 9-7, and Winlow’s best vault – in the last meet before her injury – was just over eight feet. But she did it, and at the state meet, she finished in a third-place tie with a PR of 10 feet.

“That showed how hard of a worker she was,” said Huffman. “I already knew how athletic she was, but here she was third at state with less than four weeks of practice during the season. That was a revelation for her. I’d always felt that there was no limit if she dedicated herself to the vault, but until her injury, it was a hard sell.

“Everybody here works hard, but Loreah takes it to a different level,” he said. “During her sophomore year, she came in to lift every day with (ex-wrestling coach) Scott Jones and his daughter, and she transformed herself into a chiseled athlete. I think that her conditioning really helped in her recovery.”

Winlow also credits her conditioning for her successful transformation into an elite athlete.

“I knew that to focus on both gymnastics and vault, I had to get stronger,” she said. “Lifting with Coach Jones made a huge difference. You need core strength to get upside down on the vault, and it takes great upper body strength to do that extra lifting and get up on the pole.”

Winlow hopes to compete in college and has been in contact with both Washington State University and Boise State. But she knows that she’ll likely have to clear at least 12 feet to get any scholarship opportunities.

“It’s been hard this spring because the weather’s been so bad,” she said. “We couldn’t even get out to vault for the first two weeks of practice, and there’s still some snow on the ground, but we just bundle up and get to it.

“Vaulting is all about patience, anyway, and trusting yourself. That’s what I remind myself before every vault – just trust!”