Quick And Owsinski: Champions Of Pole Vault U.
June 07, 2017 | Track & Field
SEATTLE - Moments after finishing first and second at the Pac-12 Championships, having cleared the same final height, seniors Elizabeth Quick and Kristina Owsinski stood side by side at the top of the podium, and a minute later in the mixed zone, Quick pointed out the silver lining that came out of Owsinski's injury fourteen months earlier.
"I like to think that Kristina just wanted to stick around and keep me company for my senior year," said Quick, who won her second straight Pac-12 title this season, with Owsinski taking second to go with her first-place finish in 2015 and a third-place trophy from 2013. "Kristina came in the year before me so I have always been looking up to her and following her example."
That the two will now finish their Husky careers together at the NCAA Outdoor Championships this Thursday in Eugene seems only natural, but it required hundreds of days and hour after hour of physical exertion, technical tinkering, pain and rehab and patience. To come through it all and put together outstanding senior seasons—year six for Owsinski and year four for Quick—is a testament to how they have constantly pushed each other, along with the entire Husky pole vault crew, to strive for new heights.
Washington's pole vault success under assistant coach Pat Licari is no secret in the track world. Seven NCAA titles and 13 Pac-12 titles do tend to get noticed. But even with the prior success, Owsinski and Quick helped produce Washington's most dominant run ever at the conference level, with four straight Pac-12 titles (2016 Olympian Diamara Planell Cruz winning in 2014), a sweep of the top-three spots at Pac-12s in 2015, and First Team All-America honors over the last three years for Quick, Owsinski, and Planell Cruz.
"I think we are part of a legacy at UW," says Quick, "because I feel like these past four years we've had a really good group of girls and we've jumped really well. We were the first school to have three girls over 14 feet at one meet, and we've consistently made it known that UW is a pole vault school. We've left a name for it."
Owsinski remembers a specific road meet where the public address announcer referred to Washington as Pole Vault University. Coach Licari is at the center of that world, she says, and the relatively large group of vaulters on the men's and women's side has fostered a great team atmosphere.
"We've had such a strong group of girls and guys who are equally motivated to want to get there, and so I feel like we just vibe off each other," Owsinski says. "I feel like to all cohesively get along and want the same end goal is rare, and so when you have it you have to kind of cherish it."
If anyone can truly cherish the sport, it is Owsinski, who had to fight through a foot injury before her college career even got off the ground, spending much of her freshman year in a walking boot. Then when she was coming off a record-breaking 2015 and looking to defend a Pac-12 title, chase another NCAA podium finish and compete at the Olympic Trials, Owsinski ruptured her Achilles tendon on a simple step back as she prepared to start down the runway mid-meet at the 2016 Husky Classic.
Owsinski had already cleared 14-1 ¼ on that day and was already assured of a second NCAA Indoor Championship bid. Instead, she was faced with wondering if she would ever vault again.
That didn't last long. Owsinski decided then and there that vaulting was a passion she wasn't nearly ready to shake. She looked past the months of rehab and saw herself flying again, getting back a final outdoor season as a Dawg, but continuing on with the sport after college, as far as she could take it.
"Honestly that was the first thing that came into my head, what if I could come back for another year?" she wondered. "Where would I be at? How high could I be jumping? I feel like it takes ten years to master anything, and so to get close to doing that in the pole vault and finally feel technically stable, it's really hard to see something cut short. So I'm definitely going to keep vaulting."
While pursuing that sixth year, Owsinski took postbaccalaureate classes, adding a second major in Gender Studies to her first major, Communications, with a Diversity minor to go along with it. There would be no coasting to the finish line in the classroom. "I wanted to come back as a full-blown student-athlete and that's what I did," she says. "I had to take a full load of courses during my competitive season and I forgot how hard it is to juggle all of that. So it was a good reminder of just time management and how much work and effort goes into being a student-athlete."
After the NCAA Championships, Owsinski will swap some classroom hours for a busier work schedule at Oiselle, the women's running apparel company based in Seattle where she has "found a niche" in logistics and inventory, while hoping to embark on her post-collegiate vaulting career.
"We have a lot of great athletes here in Seattle that are still pursuing their track careers, so I think to find a good group and have your teammates and coach as support should be a fun adventure," she says. "If I do ever become an elite professional athlete I want to be able to use my platform for something a little bit bigger, and that's the main goal for me in working with a company like Oiselle, is being able to use that experience and that community-building in a positive way. I feel like that's what I've always had a passion for, so we'll see where it goes."
Quick has earned her Bachelor's degree with a Biology major, and has her sights set on a career as a Physician's Assistant. Due to her track commitments, she did not have the time to gain the clinical care hours necessary for P.A. school, so the next year will see her taking that step, and then applying to schools the next fall. If all goes according to plan, she would be back in school in two years' time.
In the meantime, Owsinski is quick to suggest, "Two years to keep pole vaulting!"
While Quick won't quite go that far yet, she is leaving the door cracked open.
"I kind of took this year to see where I'd get, and I'll probably still practice and maybe do some beach vaults, but my main focus now is just to go to P.A. school, so I've kind of accepted throughout this year that it's probably my last year vaulting, but I still might continue practicing and see if I can continue to do it a little bit through local meets."
As constant companions on the road, in hotel rooms, at breakfast, at shake-outs, and shouldering pole vault bags through airports, Quick and Owsinski have gotten in sync with each other's needs. It helps that "obviously we eat, sleep, and breathe pole vault so we have very similar needs" Owsinski says.
Both happily refer to their "brutal honesty" with each other for keeping things loose. "I can say anything to Kristina so it's really easy to get along with each other because we're not afraid to hurt each other's feelings."
Owsinski adds, "We have very similar needs in terms of food, and sleep, and rest, and just making sure we get everything we need before a competition."
While the two have both been among the NCAA's elite for several years now, each had to battle through periods where things had seemingly plateaued. Falling short of the big bars early on in their careers caused frustration to mount, and doubts to creep in.
In her redshirt freshman season, Owsinski jumped a PR of 13-4 ¼ for a surprise third-place finish at Pac-12s, but her sophomore season saw her go 13-5 or 13-6 at five different meets indoors, and outdoors her best dropped back down to 13-3. It wasn't until the MPSF Championships her junior year in 2015 that Owsinski broke through, clearing 14-feet even on a third attempt, and following that with another third attempt make of 14-2, raising her career-best by eight inches in one day and suddenly qualifying for her first NCAA Championship.
"Right before the year where I jumped 14 feet and qualified for NCAAs twice, I was thinking about quitting honestly," she admits. "I wasn't enjoying it anymore, it's so mentally exhausting, and when you show up to something that you don't enjoy it's really hard to push through. And I'm so thankful I had teammates like Liz and Diamara who could talk me through it and remind me that despite not jumping 14 feet at the time, I had improved every year, and it takes time and I have to trust the process."
Quick also was nearing the end of her third indoor season before a breakthrough meet vaulted her into the NCAA picture for the first time. After a personal-best of 13-4 ½ as a freshman, she had a modest gain to 13-7 as a sophomore, but it wasn't until the third indoor meet of 2016, the Husky Classic, the same meet coincidentally where Owsinski ruptured her Achilles, that Quick hit for multiple PRs. She cleared 14-1 ¼, her first time ever over 14-feet, and after seeing Owsinski's injury and knowing she might not get to go to nationals, Quick made sure she could go in her place with another clearance at 14-3 ¼. Like Owsinski the previous year, it was an eight-inch improvement in one meet after years of hard work.
"Sophomore year was the one point indoors where I was having a hard time," says Quick. "I wasn't jumping 14 which was the goal, and then I was not doing well in school, so I was coming to the point where I was like should I choose one or the other? Or should I change my major? But I knew what I wanted to do in the future so I didn't want to change my major, and I've always loved doing sports, so it was not in my head to quit, and thankfully I stuck it out and it got better in both areas."
After banging their heads on the ceiling, the breakthroughs finally came, and both credit Licari for always giving them something positive to focus on even when it wasn't all coming together.
"Pat always wants us to walk away learning something and patting ourselves on the back with something and I think that's really important," Owsinski says. "It's hard to improve and stay motivated when you're being torn down, but Pat does a good job of making sure we take something out of it, and knowing that we did something well no matter what it was."
Throughout her comeback and into her sixth year, going from work and rehab to returning to the stresses of NCAA competition and a full class load, Owsinski says Quick has been her emotional rock, when sometimes it felt "like my head was spinning."
"I needed someone to emotionally latch onto. When we go on travel trips she's always so calm and collected and I feel like I can express how I'm feeling and she gives me the feedback I need. So she's helping me just hold everything together, it's amazing!"
What Quick admires most in her teammate is the grit and motivation that brought her back through two season-ending injuries. "I don't know if I had ruptured my Achilles if I would have the drive to come back, and come back to school, so I feel like Kristina just knows what she wants, she's very dedicated and she goes after it, and it's just really admirable."
With Austin and West Prelims successfully in the rearview mirror (no easy task, as it took a record-high clearance of 14-1 ¼ just to make the top-12), the two were back in the Dempsey last week back doing some "fine-tuning" and still enjoying the process.
"I feel like I've focused more on my step, I finally got my run down, so just focusing on my step and then making the plant perfect and then having everything else afterwards work out better," is what Quick thinks she has improved the most this year. "When you first come to UW you spend so much time working on your plant and finally it's good enough where you don't have to worry about it every day, so you can just work on the second half of the vault, and putting it all together."
Owsinski believes that some PR heights are still in the tank, and nothing would be better than hitting them at Hayward Field this Thursday in their last meet as Huskies.
"PRs are definitely still in there," Owsinski says. "Now that all the stress is over of getting through Regionals. We know that we're good enough to be there and we can jump high. I honestly think that even if the weather in Eugene is not the best we're so equipped for that. As long as we're mentally strong we can definitely take on anything.
"We're physically capable, now it's just more about keeping your mind right. Not letting emotions take over. Obviously it's our last meet as Huskies so it's sad that it's coming to an end but it's also exciting, so just going in with a clear head and knowing what we need to do. We just need to stay positive and stay focused."
However the meet unfolds on Thursday, Quick and Owsinski will be there to celebrate each other's successes, reflect on the legacy they left, and embrace whatever challenges come next.
"I like to think that Kristina just wanted to stick around and keep me company for my senior year," said Quick, who won her second straight Pac-12 title this season, with Owsinski taking second to go with her first-place finish in 2015 and a third-place trophy from 2013. "Kristina came in the year before me so I have always been looking up to her and following her example."
That the two will now finish their Husky careers together at the NCAA Outdoor Championships this Thursday in Eugene seems only natural, but it required hundreds of days and hour after hour of physical exertion, technical tinkering, pain and rehab and patience. To come through it all and put together outstanding senior seasons—year six for Owsinski and year four for Quick—is a testament to how they have constantly pushed each other, along with the entire Husky pole vault crew, to strive for new heights.
Washington's pole vault success under assistant coach Pat Licari is no secret in the track world. Seven NCAA titles and 13 Pac-12 titles do tend to get noticed. But even with the prior success, Owsinski and Quick helped produce Washington's most dominant run ever at the conference level, with four straight Pac-12 titles (2016 Olympian Diamara Planell Cruz winning in 2014), a sweep of the top-three spots at Pac-12s in 2015, and First Team All-America honors over the last three years for Quick, Owsinski, and Planell Cruz.
"I think we are part of a legacy at UW," says Quick, "because I feel like these past four years we've had a really good group of girls and we've jumped really well. We were the first school to have three girls over 14 feet at one meet, and we've consistently made it known that UW is a pole vault school. We've left a name for it."
Owsinski remembers a specific road meet where the public address announcer referred to Washington as Pole Vault University. Coach Licari is at the center of that world, she says, and the relatively large group of vaulters on the men's and women's side has fostered a great team atmosphere.
"We've had such a strong group of girls and guys who are equally motivated to want to get there, and so I feel like we just vibe off each other," Owsinski says. "I feel like to all cohesively get along and want the same end goal is rare, and so when you have it you have to kind of cherish it."
If anyone can truly cherish the sport, it is Owsinski, who had to fight through a foot injury before her college career even got off the ground, spending much of her freshman year in a walking boot. Then when she was coming off a record-breaking 2015 and looking to defend a Pac-12 title, chase another NCAA podium finish and compete at the Olympic Trials, Owsinski ruptured her Achilles tendon on a simple step back as she prepared to start down the runway mid-meet at the 2016 Husky Classic.
Owsinski had already cleared 14-1 ¼ on that day and was already assured of a second NCAA Indoor Championship bid. Instead, she was faced with wondering if she would ever vault again.
That didn't last long. Owsinski decided then and there that vaulting was a passion she wasn't nearly ready to shake. She looked past the months of rehab and saw herself flying again, getting back a final outdoor season as a Dawg, but continuing on with the sport after college, as far as she could take it.
"Honestly that was the first thing that came into my head, what if I could come back for another year?" she wondered. "Where would I be at? How high could I be jumping? I feel like it takes ten years to master anything, and so to get close to doing that in the pole vault and finally feel technically stable, it's really hard to see something cut short. So I'm definitely going to keep vaulting."
While pursuing that sixth year, Owsinski took postbaccalaureate classes, adding a second major in Gender Studies to her first major, Communications, with a Diversity minor to go along with it. There would be no coasting to the finish line in the classroom. "I wanted to come back as a full-blown student-athlete and that's what I did," she says. "I had to take a full load of courses during my competitive season and I forgot how hard it is to juggle all of that. So it was a good reminder of just time management and how much work and effort goes into being a student-athlete."
After the NCAA Championships, Owsinski will swap some classroom hours for a busier work schedule at Oiselle, the women's running apparel company based in Seattle where she has "found a niche" in logistics and inventory, while hoping to embark on her post-collegiate vaulting career.
"We have a lot of great athletes here in Seattle that are still pursuing their track careers, so I think to find a good group and have your teammates and coach as support should be a fun adventure," she says. "If I do ever become an elite professional athlete I want to be able to use my platform for something a little bit bigger, and that's the main goal for me in working with a company like Oiselle, is being able to use that experience and that community-building in a positive way. I feel like that's what I've always had a passion for, so we'll see where it goes."
Quick has earned her Bachelor's degree with a Biology major, and has her sights set on a career as a Physician's Assistant. Due to her track commitments, she did not have the time to gain the clinical care hours necessary for P.A. school, so the next year will see her taking that step, and then applying to schools the next fall. If all goes according to plan, she would be back in school in two years' time.
In the meantime, Owsinski is quick to suggest, "Two years to keep pole vaulting!"
While Quick won't quite go that far yet, she is leaving the door cracked open.
"I kind of took this year to see where I'd get, and I'll probably still practice and maybe do some beach vaults, but my main focus now is just to go to P.A. school, so I've kind of accepted throughout this year that it's probably my last year vaulting, but I still might continue practicing and see if I can continue to do it a little bit through local meets."
As constant companions on the road, in hotel rooms, at breakfast, at shake-outs, and shouldering pole vault bags through airports, Quick and Owsinski have gotten in sync with each other's needs. It helps that "obviously we eat, sleep, and breathe pole vault so we have very similar needs" Owsinski says.
Both happily refer to their "brutal honesty" with each other for keeping things loose. "I can say anything to Kristina so it's really easy to get along with each other because we're not afraid to hurt each other's feelings."
Owsinski adds, "We have very similar needs in terms of food, and sleep, and rest, and just making sure we get everything we need before a competition."
While the two have both been among the NCAA's elite for several years now, each had to battle through periods where things had seemingly plateaued. Falling short of the big bars early on in their careers caused frustration to mount, and doubts to creep in.
In her redshirt freshman season, Owsinski jumped a PR of 13-4 ¼ for a surprise third-place finish at Pac-12s, but her sophomore season saw her go 13-5 or 13-6 at five different meets indoors, and outdoors her best dropped back down to 13-3. It wasn't until the MPSF Championships her junior year in 2015 that Owsinski broke through, clearing 14-feet even on a third attempt, and following that with another third attempt make of 14-2, raising her career-best by eight inches in one day and suddenly qualifying for her first NCAA Championship.
"Right before the year where I jumped 14 feet and qualified for NCAAs twice, I was thinking about quitting honestly," she admits. "I wasn't enjoying it anymore, it's so mentally exhausting, and when you show up to something that you don't enjoy it's really hard to push through. And I'm so thankful I had teammates like Liz and Diamara who could talk me through it and remind me that despite not jumping 14 feet at the time, I had improved every year, and it takes time and I have to trust the process."
Quick also was nearing the end of her third indoor season before a breakthrough meet vaulted her into the NCAA picture for the first time. After a personal-best of 13-4 ½ as a freshman, she had a modest gain to 13-7 as a sophomore, but it wasn't until the third indoor meet of 2016, the Husky Classic, the same meet coincidentally where Owsinski ruptured her Achilles, that Quick hit for multiple PRs. She cleared 14-1 ¼, her first time ever over 14-feet, and after seeing Owsinski's injury and knowing she might not get to go to nationals, Quick made sure she could go in her place with another clearance at 14-3 ¼. Like Owsinski the previous year, it was an eight-inch improvement in one meet after years of hard work.
"Sophomore year was the one point indoors where I was having a hard time," says Quick. "I wasn't jumping 14 which was the goal, and then I was not doing well in school, so I was coming to the point where I was like should I choose one or the other? Or should I change my major? But I knew what I wanted to do in the future so I didn't want to change my major, and I've always loved doing sports, so it was not in my head to quit, and thankfully I stuck it out and it got better in both areas."
After banging their heads on the ceiling, the breakthroughs finally came, and both credit Licari for always giving them something positive to focus on even when it wasn't all coming together.
"Pat always wants us to walk away learning something and patting ourselves on the back with something and I think that's really important," Owsinski says. "It's hard to improve and stay motivated when you're being torn down, but Pat does a good job of making sure we take something out of it, and knowing that we did something well no matter what it was."
Throughout her comeback and into her sixth year, going from work and rehab to returning to the stresses of NCAA competition and a full class load, Owsinski says Quick has been her emotional rock, when sometimes it felt "like my head was spinning."
"I needed someone to emotionally latch onto. When we go on travel trips she's always so calm and collected and I feel like I can express how I'm feeling and she gives me the feedback I need. So she's helping me just hold everything together, it's amazing!"
What Quick admires most in her teammate is the grit and motivation that brought her back through two season-ending injuries. "I don't know if I had ruptured my Achilles if I would have the drive to come back, and come back to school, so I feel like Kristina just knows what she wants, she's very dedicated and she goes after it, and it's just really admirable."
With Austin and West Prelims successfully in the rearview mirror (no easy task, as it took a record-high clearance of 14-1 ¼ just to make the top-12), the two were back in the Dempsey last week back doing some "fine-tuning" and still enjoying the process.
"I feel like I've focused more on my step, I finally got my run down, so just focusing on my step and then making the plant perfect and then having everything else afterwards work out better," is what Quick thinks she has improved the most this year. "When you first come to UW you spend so much time working on your plant and finally it's good enough where you don't have to worry about it every day, so you can just work on the second half of the vault, and putting it all together."
Owsinski believes that some PR heights are still in the tank, and nothing would be better than hitting them at Hayward Field this Thursday in their last meet as Huskies.
"PRs are definitely still in there," Owsinski says. "Now that all the stress is over of getting through Regionals. We know that we're good enough to be there and we can jump high. I honestly think that even if the weather in Eugene is not the best we're so equipped for that. As long as we're mentally strong we can definitely take on anything.
"We're physically capable, now it's just more about keeping your mind right. Not letting emotions take over. Obviously it's our last meet as Huskies so it's sad that it's coming to an end but it's also exciting, so just going in with a clear head and knowing what we need to do. We just need to stay positive and stay focused."
However the meet unfolds on Thursday, Quick and Owsinski will be there to celebrate each other's successes, reflect on the legacy they left, and embrace whatever challenges come next.
Players Mentioned
PV
/ Track & Field
PV
/ Track & Field
PV
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