Elizabeth Boyle always seems to be defying gravity.
When she was 8 months old she climbed out of her crib, and her parents had to use a net to keep her fenced in.
At the playground a few years later, Boyle invariably would ascend to the top of the tallest piece of equipment. At age 6, she took up gymnastics.
“The higher and faster, the better,” she said recently about her tastes in recreation.
That would seem to define the pole vault, so it’s not surprising the New Trier junior took up track and field’s most vertical event.
What’s downright shocking, though, is that she has become one of the top female high school pole vaulters in the country in less than a year of serious competition, and that she has done it in an event that is not part of the Illinois girls state track meet.
Boyle divides her time between the girls and boys track teams, competing in sprint, hurdle and jumping events with the former and in the pole vault with the latter. She is so talented in all her events she has become the object of a friendly tug of war between girls coach Bob Spagnoli and boys coach Doug Chase about where she will compete when schedules conflict.
Both men realize, though, where Boyle’s track future resides. At the Pole Vault Summit on Jan. 20 in Reno, Nev., she cleared a personal-best 12 feet 4 inches, which according to Track and Field News is the fourth-best girls high school indoor vault in the country this season and one of the best indoors or out last year.
Pole vault runs in the Boyle family. Elizabeth’s father, Bill, was a vaulter at Marist, and three of his brothers participated in the event as well.
One of them, Michael, is the pole vault coach at Fremd, and he asked if Elizabeth wanted to try it at a vault camp at Maine South in June 1999. She was losing interest in gymnastics and became hooked on the pole vault immediately.
“She said, `It’s so cool,'” Elizabeth’s mom, Leslie, said. “Whatever happened that day she liked.”
Boyle vaulted three times that month, clearing 7-6, and liked it enough she asked New Trier officials if she could vault with the girls track team. New Trier doesn’t offer girls pole vaulting–according to a 1999 Illinois High School Association survey, only about 30 Illinois schools do–but they said she could vault with the boys team.
She began during the outdoor season because the ceiling in New Trier’s indoor facility is too low for the pole vault. Boyle found it somewhat stressful dividing her workouts and meets between the boys and girls teams and a bit awkward at first being the only girl on a boys team.
But she said the coaches and athletes on both teams were helpful throughout the season. By the time that season ended, she had cleared 9-6.
In June Boyle attended a pole vault camp in Wisconsin run by Jan Johnson, the Illinois high school champion in the event in 1968 for Bloom and a bronze medalist in the 1972 Olympics. Johnson showed Boyle how to get a bend in her fiberglass pole, a crucial step in successful vaulting, and he struck up a friendship with her dad, who had competed against Johnson’s younger brother, Tim, in high school.
Johnson invited her to train for 10 days in July at his vaulting facility in Atascadero, Calif. The trip would be expensive, but the Boyles decided it was too good an opportunity to pass up.
“We thought maybe there was something to Elizabeth pole vaulting,” Bill Boyle said. “Maybe Jan saw something.”
He saw potential, of course, but also a passion for the pole vault that any athlete must have to become great.
“It’s addictive,” Boyle said. “I would really love to excel in it and be the best.”
While Boyle and her mom were in California, they attended the U.S. Olympic trials in Sacramento and watched Stacy Dragila clear 15-2 1/4 to break her own world record.
“Elizabeth looked at me kind of matter of fact,” Leslie Boyle said, “and she said, `I want to beat that.’ “
At the time, Boyle’s best vault was about 11 feet. In December, she cleared 11-6 the first time she vaulted under any conditions in five months.
She made her stunning leap in Reno with borrowed poles after vaulting just two more times, then tried unsuccessfully to convince her parents to let her go bungee-jumping nearby.
“Her improvement is pretty remarkable,” said Johnson, who will conduct a pole vault clinic this weekend at Maine South. “She really has the right stuff.”
Natural ability and a gymnastics background have helped power Boyle’s rapid ascent, but so has hard work. In the off-season she ran and lifted weights–often on her own or with male athletes–to improve her speed and strength.
“You’d see her in the weight cage getting ready to vault,” Chase said. “The girl lives to vault.”
Boyle would love to do it with the girls track team and compete for a girls state pole vault title. She believed she would get that chance when the IHSA track and field advisory committee recommended the pole vault be added to the girls state meet. But the association’s board of directors rejected the recommendation Oct. 16, citing liability concerns and the current low level of participation among girls in the event.
In November, Hansel DeBartolo Jr. and Susan DeBartolo of Aurora filed a discrimination complaint in Kane County Circuit Court on behalf of their daughter, Janae, seeking an injunction to force the IHSA to add the pole vault to the girls state meet. Janae, a freshman at Rosary, has cleared 9 feet.
The complaint, which Hansel DeBartolo said is scheduled to be heard next month, claims the IHSA has violated Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution by not allowing Janae the same opportunity boys have. An IHSA spokesman said he could not comment about the complaint because he had not seen it.
Bill and Leslie Boyle have contributed $500 toward the cost of the complaint, and their usually quiet daughter gets almost fiery about the subject.
“It’s not very fair to allow the guys to vault and not the girls,” she said about having the vault in one state meet and not the other. “It’s very sexist.”
Boyle, now New Trier’s No. 1 vaulter, is happy she can at least compete in boys meets, though she is unlikely to qualify for the boys state championships. And she’s especially happy finally to have a female vault teammate, junior Chesed Coppenger.
Coppenger competed in the pole vault in Missouri as a freshman and in Tennessee last year. Both are among the approximately 35 states that have the event in their girls state meets, and Coppenger, who has cleared 8-6, is surprised Illinois hasn’t joined them.
“When you have someone like Elizabeth in your state, you have to take advantage of it,” she said. “She’s amazing.”
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Send e-mail to Barry Temkin at BarTem@aol.com
