It may be surprising now, but senior Tessa Sheets didn’t always want to be a pole vaulter.
To date, she has achieved first place in the state’s 3A pole vaulting championships on three separate occasions—two of those times she beat the next best vaulter in the state by a full nineteen inches. Sheets has won multiple invitational and conference meets in North Carolina, and her dedication to the sport has brought her to compete against the best vaulters in the state.
Yet she had never even considered pole vaulting until she tried some vaulting drills on her first ever day of track practice and told her father about it.
“He was surprised and said he did it in high school too, and he talked about the physics of it and was really enthusiastic about me pole vaulting,” Sheets said. “Both my mother and father were very supportive of the idea. Before I had a car, my father would take me to my separate pole vault practices as he was taking and analyzing my videos and hearing the coach’s feedback…. My dad now really understands the vault, and I can depend on him to coach and support me when my coach isn’t there.”
While her pole vaulting career came late, Sheets was never a stranger to athletics. Sports have been part of her family’s tradition and played a significant part in her life growing up.
“She used to do softball, and she excelled really well in that, and then it went to high jump and running track, then it was cross country,” Tessa’s sister Anna Sheets said. “[Athletics] have been in our lives ever since we were babies. Our family’s huge into it, so it’s definitely that family influence.”
When she began vaulting, Tessa showed great potential but was far from reaching the level she is at today.
“I think the hardest thing I learned from pole vaulting was learning how to get back up after defeat,” Tessa said. “At the state meet freshman year, I cleared 10 feet. It was a new personal record… and later that summer I competed in a meet and I got a no height—I didn’t clear a bar. And so it was really hard coming from a whole year of personal records and improvement to not clearing a single bar.”
It took a long time for Tessa to master the vault enough to begin growing consistently.
“She always had the potential, but now she’s gotten better,” track and field coach Richard McDonald said. “Freshman year, she was a little inconsistent at times. But I think she’s gotten stronger because she’s just worked at it. You don’t know how complicated the vault is until you do it.”
That determination to improve has carried on undiminished for the past four years. Tessa constantly works to develop her pole vaulting skills.
“You have to do a bad vault 500 times before you can get one single good vault, and so I’ve really learned how to deal with frustration,” Tessa said. “The best part of succeeding is knowing you succeeded after all those failures.”
She spends three afternoons a week practicing at a private facility in Apex, where she trains with Spencer Frame, a man who has been coaching Division I collegiate pole vaulters for 10 years. On other days, she often spends an hour and a half to two hours running on Northwood’s track after school.
“All summer I’m training,” Tessa said. “I’m going to meets on Saturdays. Sometimes I can’t hang out with my friends because I’m at practice…. But in the end I’d rather be practicing and getting better than getting a job or anything else.”
Most recently, Tessa reached a height of 12 feet, seven inches at the indoor state championships.
“[She’s] quietly competitive,” McDonald said. “She sits and says, ‘I know I’m sure of myself, I can get better and I’m going to do the work to do it.’”
Before the end of her senior year, Tessa hopes to break the North Carolina 3A women’s record of 13 feet, six inches.
“I want to get the North Carolina outdoor state record and at least end up on the national podium,” Tessa said. “I feel really close; I feel like I can get there…. It’s something that only you can do—in the end, it’s not anyone else’s fault if you didn’t clear that bar.”
– By Colin Battis
