Such Great Heights

Chris Nilsen Balances Pole Vault and Parenting

 

By Dave Devine for DyeStat

 

Like most toddlers, 16-month-old Roman Nilsen has certain toys that are designated for indoor use, others that are strictly for outside play.

Unlike most children his age, one of those outdoor playthings is a pole vault “stubby,” a segment from a pole that was broken in practice, sawed down, smoothed off and repurposed for use in various vaulting drills.

Only, in this case, the vaulter lugging the stubby around has only recently learned to walk.

It’s not that his parents are overbearing, or attempting to engineer an athletic prodigy, it’s just that Roman wants to be like his dad.

And at the moment, his dad — University of South Dakota junior Chris Nilsen — is ranked number two in the world for his event and preparing to defend the NCAA Division 1 outdoor title he claimed in 2018.  

If Chris’ pole vault expertise has taken him to impressive heights during the last few years, including remarkable reliability over 5.70m (18-08.75), with four vaults over 5.80m (19-00.25) this season alone, his son has yet to establish the same consistency.

Or accuracy.

“He will swing it at the TV,” laughs Kelly Vogel-Nilsen, Chris’ wife and Roman’s mom, “so we have to keep it as an outside toy.”

In late January 2018, Chris and Kelly became parents to Roman in the middle of Chris’ sophomore year at South Dakota. They’ve been balancing the life of an elite Division 1 student-athlete with the joys and challenges of raising a child ever since.

While Chris has refused to compromise on his responsibilities as a father, Kelly has been equally insistent that he not sacrifice his promising vaulting career.

“You hear about people having a kid when they’re young,” Chris notes, “and other people saying, ‘Well, their life’s over — time to settle down, get a job, whatever.’ But Kelly was like, ‘No, you’re not doing that. You’re going to follow your dreams and I’m going to support you through it. You’re going to pole vault, and you’re going to do well.’”

That fierce support, along with his own diligence on and off the runway, has placed Chris in a unique position among his NCAA Division 1 track and field peers — a two-time national champion and world-ranked collegian who returns to a family each evening after practice.

On good days or bad days, big bars or no-heights, when Chris walks through the door of the apartment near campus where he lives with Kelly and Roman, there’s a little boy with boundless energy, waiting to play or watch videos with his father.

“It’s actually really nice to come home,” Chris says, “If I’ve had a bad meet, my wife and son don’t really care, they’re going to love me either way.”

Fortunately, for the South Dakota standout, there aren’t many bad meets.

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When it comes to challenging competitive environments, Chris is quick to point out that the NCAA preliminary meet is, in some ways, more daunting than the actual NCAA championship.

“Regionals is always kind of a stressful thing,” he says, “because it’s really the only meet of the year where something can go wrong.”

Unlike almost any other event, the vaulting doesn’t point toward a single winner or a dramatic final height. Once a designated number of vaulters remain in the competition — 12 each from the East and West — the jumping is done.

At the West Preliminary in Sacramento, Calif., on May 23, the vaulting concluded with a dozen competitors clustered between 5.31m (17-5) and 5.36m (17-7).

But, as Chris notes, “Most of the time that’s my opening height.”

He knows the meet can become a minefield if he enters the competition with a mindset that, All I have to do is clear this bar.

“It becomes more complicated than that.”

This year, the weather took a turn and rain began falling midway through the competition. The crosswind, predictably vexing to vaulters in Sacramento, shifted into a headwind.

It took Chris three attempts to clear the final 5.36m bar.

“But we got through it,” he says, “and now it’s on to Nationals.”

There, the bar will continue to rise until a champion is named, and he’ll find a clutch of talented youngsters clamoring for the crown he secured last June.

Unprompted, he reels off the names of three true freshmen — all of whom have cleared 5.70m or higher — that represent significant threats to his attempted repeat.

“Zach Bradford (Kansas), KC Lightfoot (Baylor), of course Mondo (Duplantis of LSU)…you’ve got all these great freshmen coming in who, last year in high school, were clearing 18 feet or higher, meet in and meet out.”

One of those freshmen, wunderkind Duplantis, already topped Chris at the NCAA indoor championship this past March.

“It’s been amazing to watch,” he says of Mondo’s ascent, which included laying waste to the national high school record Chris set as a senior in 2016.

“And I’m just happy to be a part of it. At the same time, I’m not one to feel pressure from the competition.”

In fact, he prefers competing against the strongest athletes, and recognizes that at the NCAA outdoor champs in Austin, he’ll get that chance.

And not just against the best in the country, but the best in the world.

Bradford is currently ranked sixth globally on the latest IAAF performance lists, while Lightfoot is tied with NCAA competitors Jacob Wooten (Texas A&M senior) and Clayton Fritsch (Sam Houston State sophomore) for ninth on the international list.

And then there’s Duplantis. 

“Mondo is literally the world leader,” Chris says. “I’m number two. It’s going to be a really fun competition.”

 

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Kelly recalls, with great clarity, the first time she told Chris she loved him.

So does Chris.

They were teenagers, a year apart, training under renowned pole vault coach Rick Attig through his Xtreme Athletics program in Merriam, Kansas.

Chris, coming off a sophomore year in which he’d topped out at 12-3, was hoping to make a jump to the next level. Kelly was transitioning from her first athletic love, soccer, after a pair of concussions left her turning to cross country and track for a new sports outlet.

At 17, Kelly was a year older, but that didn’t deter the lanky, gregarious 16-year-old from introducing himself. 

“My first interaction with Chris,” Kelly recalls, “was him running up, sticking out his hand and saying, ‘Hi, my name is Chris Nilsen,’ and then running off. I thought he was really funny, a cute string bean. But he ran off, so I looked at my friend and was like, ‘Well, I guess I know him now.’”

The more time they spent together on the team, the more their friendship moved toward romantic interest, but the two never found themselves single at the same time. When that window finally opened, Chris took a while to ask Kelly if she’d like to date.

“He asked me out at my high school graduation party,” she says. “It took off from there.”

One day at practice during their early months together, Chris broke a pole and went tumbling awkwardly into the pit. As he scrambled to retrieve the shattered pieces, Kelly ran up to make sure her boyfriend wasn’t injured.

“I went, ‘Oh my gosh, are you okay?’ and he was like, ‘Yeah,’ and I said, ‘Okay, good — love you.’ And then I thought, Wait — no! I felt like it was too soon to say that.”

In Chris’ telling, he was still laughing from the pole splitting while he was in mid-air. “Then she just said, ‘I love you.’ And I was like — Whoa, what?”

“But he sure was grinning,” Kelly says.

She decided to attend nearby Johnson County Community College, rather than one of the larger colleges that had recruited her, but she didn’t tell her parents why at the time.

“We weren’t dating that long,” she says. “If I’d told my parents I was staying close to home for a boy, they would’ve killed me.”

Like many young relationships, Chris and Kelly had a few rough patches, a brief breakup when each felt burdened by outside stressors, but when Kelly experienced a death in her family, there was Chris again, showing up when she needed him most.

It wasn’t long before they were dating again.

They’ve been together ever since.

When Roman came along in January 2018, they made the difficult decision for Kelly to live in Missouri, closer to family support, while Chris remained at South Dakota to finish out his sophomore year.

Both knew that the arrangement offered the best recovery for Kelly and the best start for Roman, but that didn’t make it any easier.

“We just knew that with the distance,” Kelly says, “and Chris having to be gone for track meets, it would probably be best if I was close to family. Just to help make sure I was okay, that Roman was doing well for the first couple of months.”

At the end of that tumultuous semester, and after months of back-and-forth travel for Chris, he made sure the discipline and hard work paid off by winning NCAA outdoor laurels to accompany the indoor title he’d won as a freshman in 2017.

“It felt good to make it through those tough times,” he says, “and to still win a championship.”

This year, the family has been living together in that apartment off campus, and Chris says it’s the happiest he’s been in his entire life.

Athletically, not only has he been able to maintain his performance level from before he became a father, he’s achieved greater consistency and focus.

Kelly has been a big part of that consistency, but she also credits Chris’ coach, longtime South Dakota mentor and two-time Olympian, Derek Miles, with serving as a fantastic role model for her husband.

“One of the things that Chris admires about Derek,” she says, “is that he continues to dedicate his life to pole vaulting while still balancing his family life.”

She’s seen Chris grow into that balance, too.

The way he endeavors to leave pole vaulting on the runway and the landing pads, strives to be fully present to her and Roman when he’s home.

From Chris’ perspective, it’s Kelly who makes the balance possible.

Besides caring for Roman, she’s holding down two jobs as a server and a barista during the hours their son attends day care.

“I couldn’t be a track and field athlete right now without her,” he says simply. “She’s done such a great job as a mom. She’s my partner, and I just could not do life without her.”

 

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When Chris speculates about the upcoming NCAA championship meet, he doesn’t sound like an athlete describing a fraught situation. He doesn’t sound stressed or unnerved by the prospect of the high-level, competitive crucible.

He sounds like a kid, excited about playing.

He mentions Mondo and KC, Zach and Sondre (Guttormsen), and he sounds like a guy getting the gang back together, energized and enthusiastic.  

“Getting to compete against them,” he says. “it’s like — I’m just excited to go and hang out with my friends.”

He’s that lanky 16-year old again. Goofy and earnest.

That doesn’t mean he’s not looking forward to the competition, but with two NCAA titles already to his name, he’s less focused on the victory than on jumping high. At this point, he says, he doesn’t need the win to feel complete or accomplished. 

“Nobody likes to lose, but I think I’d rather jump a high bar.”

Between the energy of an historically good field and the favorable conditions at Mike A. Myers Stadium — replete with a reliable tailwind and enthusiastic crowds — he’s hoping that a new personal best of 5.90m (19-4.25) or 5.95m (19-6.25) is in the cards.

But regardless of how things unfold in Texas, he knows he’ll return to a supportive wife and a joyful son back in South Dakota.

He’s looking forward to playing there, too. He might blow bubbles for Roman to chase down and pop. Or maybe they’ll find a grassy spot to play catch.

Or Chris might scoop up Roman and sprint with him down the hall, father and son giggling the entire way.

There are so many possibilities.

“Chris’ greatest strength,” Kelly says, “is that he adapts to Roman so quickly. Without fail, he just rolls with each new thing.”

So, maybe they’ll go mess around with that stubby pole — outside, not inside — and as Chris watches his little boy run with the shortened stick, maybe he’ll whisper to Roman where it came from.

Because that stubby? It’s not just a remnant from any broken pole, something dug out of the equipment room at South Dakota.

It’s the bottom piece from the first pole Chris ever broke, way back in high school. Back when he was a kid struggling to clear 14 feet and no one imagined he might become one of the best vaulters in the world.

It’s one of the pieces he was scrambling to pick up when a girl named Kelly, who was just trying to make sure he wasn’t hurt, leaned in and uttered two words that arguably changed their lives.

Love you.

“Ultimately,” the girl — now his wife — says, “Chris is just a great guy. And pole vaulting won’t be forever.”

And that great guy?

He knows it, too.

“My relationship with my wife and son,” Chris says, sounding wiser than his 21 years might suggest, “is 10 times more important than pole vault will ever be.”