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So up here in Milwaukee it gets pretty windy. Tuesday night we had some storms roll through and the wind got pretty gusty. I am guessing in the 30's. Our track is down in a valley where it can get even more windy. There is a big open area on the west end of the track, a canal on the north, a casino on the south, and some kind of factory on the east.

So come wednesday morning, i knew that we would have to peace the pit back togehter as we tend to do after ever storm. Usually we put a 6 foot diamiater tractor tire on the pit, but we hand not done that before the storm. So I was pretty sure the pit was all over the parking lot and fence line. Little did I know what truely happened

This is the story as i heard it. Somebody called the university athletic department and asked told them that a pole vault pit, that they though was ours was down on their property.

Turns out that one of the 3 big back pits had gotten caught in the wind.....flew over a 10' high fence, floated 1/2 a mile down a canal almost to Lake Michigan, and ended up at a Marina.

O it gets better.....so the pit is just full of water, who knows how much it weighed. The marina used a crane to lift the pit out of the water and onto a flat-bed truck. The truck then drove the pit back to the track where another truck had to use a rope to pull the pit off the flat-bed truck onto the ground. So now a third of our pole vault pit is lying in the parking lot , up-side-down, draining out all the nasty water it was full of.

I don't care what you say, I dont' think anyone can beat that story.

VaultMarq26 wrote:a casino on the south

Kickass! Blackjack after practice baby!

Oh yeah, the story is pretty awesome too!

o yeah, there is a meat-packing plant right next to the casino, and my freshman year a Bull got lose, ran down the street, through the gates into the parking lot, and onto the track.

man my practices are never that exciting

Having that canal does make it exciting....a kid threw a javelin into a couple years back.....so the coach had him get in a little row boat, and the coach pulled him along untill they got the jav.

VaultMarq26 wrote:o yeah, there is a meat-packing plant right next to the casino

I guess Marquette isn't known for producing top notch urban planners.

we had just gotten these mats back in 1997 and had them outside. We had pretty big T-storm one night and cmae out for practice the next day. The entire pit was flipped over on the track, but still clipped together and still had the rain cover on. Apparently the rain cover acted like a big parachute and the wind picked up the entire pit!

achtungpv wrote:

VaultMarq26 wrote:o yeah, there is a meat-packing plant right next to the casino

I guess Marquette isn't known for producing top notch urban planners.

LOL....no it isn't.......but putting a track in an urban area is a pretty difficult task

my freshman year at Hope College, we had a nasty wind storm (no rain or anything) and it flipped the pit over ontop of the standard and broke the standard in two pieces. thankfully it had broken where the base was welded to the upright and someone from the college came and pieced it all back together. our high jump pit ended up on the fenced-in baseball field still clipped into the weather cover.

I used to coach vault at Carroll College in the 80,s. I remember when in 1987 at a meet, the river actually caught on fire. Seems that a lot of waste product from the meat plant made its way into the river and after time began to give off methane gas. Seems that a spectator from UW-Whitewater threw a cigarette in the river and ignited the gas. You have got to love the cross winds on the vault track. By the way, you forgot about Aldrich Chemical on the other side of the river. Run at your own risk?

Coach Scott