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Amber Menke may be the current indoor pole vault record holder at New Mexico, but she has one height she wants to clear before her collegiate career ends.
She wants to hit the 14-foot mark.
“I really want to jump 14 feet, just to say I’ve jumped 14 because it’s kind of a big barrier,” Menke said during Saturday’s Don Kirby Tailwind Invitational, UNM’s lone home outdoor track meet in 2013.
Associate head coach Rodney Zuyderwyk, who coaches the team’s vaulters, said Menke is capable of reaching that mark. The key, he said, will be to get Menke onto a larger pole, which gives vaulters greater ability to clear new heights. Some of the vaults she had on bigger poles in the indoor season indicate she can clear 14 feet, Zuyderwyk said.
Menke, an Albuquerque native, has steadily improved her pole vaulting skills since she became a Lobo in 2009, going from a 10-foot, 2-inch vault in her first outdoor meet at UTEP to breaking the school’s indoor record twice last year.
She set the record at last year’s Don Kirby Elite Invitational indoor meet with 13-4 1/2 vault. She snapped it again at the Mountain West Indoor Championships with a 13-5 3/4 leap, taking second place.
Menke vaulted 13-2 1/2 for another runner-up finish at this year’s MWC indoor meet, four inches shorter than San Diego State’s Kristen Brown. However, Menke helped the Lobos claim second place in the team standings.
She competed in two of UNM’s three competitions this outdoor season. She placed third at the UTEP Springtime Invitational in El Paso, Texas, on March 23 after clearing 12-4 1/2. She won Saturday’s Don Kirby pole-vault event with a 13-1 1/2 mark.
“It was kind of tricky conditions,” Zuyderwyk said Saturday. “The wind was a little bit tricky for the vaulters. It kept switching back and forth, so she did a nice job being patient and just fighting for some jumps. She had to really fight.”
The shift from the indoor season to outdoor season requires some adjustments, Menke said. In addition to changes in weather and wind direction, differences in depth perception can play a factor when looking down an outdoor runway.
With only two meets on the book, she said her fellow vaulters are still getting accustomed to the differences. Competing at home Saturday certainly helped.
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“We’re all getting used to adjusting to outdoor season from indoor season,” she said. “We were all pretty excited to jump at home because all our family and friends can come.”
Menke came to UNM after a strong high school career as a horizontal jumper. At the 2008 New Mexico Activities Association State Track and Field Championships, she took sixth place in both the triple and long jumps. That effort helped Cibola High School take second place in the team standings.
“She’s one of those people that you could make a team out of,” UNM head track and field coach Joe Franklin said. “Her positive attitude, her supportiveness, her heart, her work ethic, her tolerance to stress — she’s just an all-around very good person.”
