Fort Wayne Produces 2 National Champions (IN)

[rainbowgirl28]

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a ... 004/SPORTS

Fort Wayne produces 2 champion vaulters


Thank you: Katie Veith acknowledges cheers after vaulting 13 feet, 11/2 inches for the title. -- Charlie Nye / The Star

By David Woods
david.woods@indystar.com

Until 2003, the Indiana high school state track and field meet didn't offer a girls pole vault event.

Friday, the state -- or city of Fort Wayne, to be precise -- produced two national champions a few minutes apart.

Katie Veith vaulted 13 feet, 11/2 inches at IUPUI's Carroll Stadium to set a Junior Olympics record for intermediate girls (ages 15-16). She missed three tries at what would've been a national record of 13-61/4 for high school sophomores.

Shortly before, Brianna Neumann vaulted 12-71/2 to win the title for young women (ages 17-18).

The former gymnasts went 1-2 at state, with Neumann (Northrop) beating defending champion Veith (Homestead). Neumann, whose best is 13-21/4, and Veith rank Nos. 7 and 9 in the nation.

Both are coached by Bob Shank, 36, the boys track coach at Northrop. Shank was a state record-holder and an 18-foot college vaulter at Illinois.

Shank credited Lawrence Central's Tori Allen for leading the way for female vaulters. Allen's father sued the Indiana High School Athletic Association so that it would include the girls pole vault.

With that barrier removed, Hoosiers have been jumping over bars. Allen did not compete here but won a national age-group title in 2003.

"These girls are really lighting it up," Shank said.

He knows a vaulter when he sees one. In 2003, he began coaching Veith, who won at the Junior Olympics five weeks after she was first on a pole.

Neumann's rise has been nearly as swift. She was an uneven bars champion in the 2004 state gymnastics meet. At Shank's urging, she began vaulting that spring. Now, she is headed to Purdue on a track scholarship.

Veith, 5-7 and 147 pounds, said she was an accomplished gymnast until abandoning that sport. Neumann blocked her goal of becoming a four-time state champion, but Veith has new goals -- to vault 14 feet in high school and compete in the 2008 Olympics, when she would be just 19.

"I can do whatever I set my mind to," Veith said.

Fort Wayne has become a vaulting Mecca. Shank coached six vaulters there, including his 14-year-old son Corey, a 14-footer.

Other high schoolers in the group are Abby Kimball (Carroll), third in the state among girls; Seager Wilson (Northrop), a 16-3 vaulter; and Jonathan Hall (Homestead), who went 15-11 Thursday for fourth in the Junior Olympics.

"We may never have this nucleus of kids again," Shank said.

[thaone600]

ya im in the group up there coached by bob shank we have a great group we had me who jumped 14 as an 8th grader a sr. girl who jumped 13 6 brianna katie who jumped 13 pretty easy as a sophmore a sophmore named hunter who went 16 6 and another girl who went 12 as a jr.