First event at new facility in Menifee, hosted by father and son tandem of Doug and Derek Bouma, will feature more than 70 pole vaulters competing in five flights, including California girls state record holder Paige Sommers and reigning champ Ashley Callahan

By Landon Negri for DyeStat

The track and field community will come to remember 2020 as a lost year, with the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic cutting a budding season down just as it was shifting into gear.

There were few positives that came in a landscape of idle athletes unable to compete or practice. But there was one, and it has risen as a roadside pole vaulting venue in the Inland Empire of Southern California.

Saturday will mark the first event ever, the Vaulter Magazine Vaulter Club Big Red Barn Meet, at the Vaulter Club’s new facility, which went from backyard construction to a venue alongside Murrieta Road, in Menifee, in a little more than six weeks. Constructing a new vault-only facility was no easy task for all the obvious reasons, and some not so obvious.

“We never knew that it was going to come down to a pandemic hitting and no one being able to vault, and having to fire a place up,” said Doug Bouma, an assistant track coach at Murrieta Valley High, who is also the founder of Vaulter Magazine and head coach at Vaulter Club.

This journey was just a thought in mid-March, when high school campuses across Southern California closed due to Coronavirus.

At the time, Bouma, a 20-year Marine veteran and native of Riverton, Wyo., who settled in South Riverside County out of Camp Pendleton in 2001, felt the itch in a time of uncertainty.

After a short search, one of the vault club parents, Scott Fears, offered up his Menifee property to build a vaulting facility. Fears’ eighth-grade daughter, Aspin, is a member of Vaulter Club.

Thoughts quickly turned to building.

“Instead of sitting back,” Bouma said, “and saying, ‘Hey, what are we going to do? What’s going to happen? What’s the future of the sport going to look like?’ We went into proactive mode. We got out there. We started hauling dump truck loads. Even when we couldn’t afford to do things, we were putting things together to get going.”

Along came the hard work, said Doug’s son, Derek. He, along with a number of club parents, worked first-hand in the building.

Derek Bouma graduated from Murrieta Valley in 2013, where he competed alongside Peter Chapman, the Nighthawks’ state champion pole vaulter in 2012. Now, he serves as an assistant and vault coach across town, at Vista Murrieta, where the club was vaulting for practice.

“Once the pandemic hit,” Derek said, “we knew it was either go big, or go home.”

Fears had space on his property he used for construction, Derek said. So the space was cleared, then dirt and roadbase was brought to level the ground and put down a runway, which the club already had.

“He saved our butt,” Doug said of Fears. “He really did come through and save us.”

But the club also had a Kanstet USA runway in storage thought to be suited only for indoor use. Upon conferring with the company, Derek said, the club realized it could use it, meaning it already had an upgrade.

That also meant almost starting all over again to switch out runways.

“We lost two weeks of work,” Derek said.

The runway went in, the recommended space from the property fences was adhered to, and lights went up. The club also installed LEDs around the plant box and put up an adjacent ring tower. Synthetic turf was put down surrounding the runway. This week, in fact, more lighting is going up in advance of Saturday’s meet.

Once the runway and pit were operable, Doug said he invited anyone to vault for free in April. All the while, he said, the club was careful to make sure social distancing guidelines were followed during workouts.

Some days were 12-14 hours of work through late rain in March and early April, and now the heat of summer.

“It was maximum tired,” Derek said. “I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard in my entire life.

“It’s been a roller coaster of hard work, mixed in with a whole lot of fun,” he added.

With the only pole vault competition showcased around the world in recent months being The Ultimate Garden Clash virtual events coordinated by World Athletics, Doug said more than 70 vaulters have signed up to compete Saturday in five different flights, with elite flights going off at 3:30 p.m. (men) and 6 p.m. (women).

There will be music, and a taco truck is planned for spectators.

The fees – $10 for athletes and $5 for spectators – generated Saturday will go to more upgrades, including lengthening the runway with hopes of 150 feet in the future. And it appears the club caught a break with the weather, as Saturday’s forecasted high in Menifee and neighboring Sun City is only 74 degrees after reaching 100 on Wednesday.

Competition begins with a beginners flight at 8 a.m., followed by a boys intermediate flight at 10:30 a.m. and a girls intermediate flight at 1 p.m.

The men’s elite division is scheduled to be highlighted by Luigi Colella, the state’s pole vault champ from 2013 when he was at Thousand Oaks High, as well as UCLA’s Kyle Brown, Garrett Brown from La Costa Canyon High and Keaton Daniel, a former two-time Nevada state champion at Coronado High, who cleared 18 feet earlier this year at the UCS Spirit National Pole Vault Summit in Reno.

The featured matchup on the girls’ side will be between the state’s top two high school vaulters from a year ago, Ashley Callahan and Paige Sommers, along with UCLA-bound Katerina Adamiec of Poway.

Callahan, from Rancho Bernardo High, won the 2019 state title in Clovis with a mark of 13 feet, 4 inches; Sommers, from Westlake, was second at 13 feet, with Adamiec sixth at 12-8.

In February, though, Sommers set a new state and junior class national record at 14-6 in the Lancer Invitational on the outdoor season’s opening weekend at the Thousand Oaks Lancer Invitational. It also ranked as the nation’s top mark when competition was halted in March. Callahan was No. 3 at 13-5.

“I’m so excited to compete, especially since Paige is going to be there and I get to compete with all my friends,” said Callahan, who said she has been vaulting three times per week in Escondido with additional training on her off days.

“I’m excited to finally have something, a meet, to go to,” she added.

First priority for the club is getting through Saturday. Beyond that could be more meets, and of course, a privately owned facility for the club to use as high school and college athletes hope for a somewhat normal 2020-21 school year.

“It’s just extra nice knowing that it wouldn’t have happened without tons and tons and tons of hard work,” Derek said. “That’s super rewarding.”