By Kyle Terwillegar, USTFCCCA
February 15, 2015
Barber Breaks His Collegiate Pole Vault Record For a Second
Straight Weekend
Stop us if you’ve heard this before, but a collegiate pole vault record was broken this weekend. That’s right, for the second week in a row, Akron’s Shawn Barber flew higher than any man in collegiate indoor history with a vault of 19-4¼ (5.90m) to surpass his own former record by two centimeters. That gives him a share of the No. 2 spot in indoor/outdoor collegiate history with former indoor record holder Jacob Davis of Texas, and moves him into a share of the No. 18 spot in world indoor history.
Watch Barber’s Vault Here.
Most impressively, he did it on a night where his top NCAA competitors brought their "A"-game. Barber and two-time indoor NCAA champ Andrew Irwin of Arkansas cleared 5.75m (a PR for Irwin to move to No. 7 on the all-time college indoor performers list) on their first attempts, followed shortly thereafter by Tennessee’s Jake Blankenship, who passed to the next height after a first-attempt miss.
Barber, confident in his abilities, passed on 5.80m, a height at which both Irwin and Blankenship went out. Barber bypassed the next scheduled height and went straight to 5.90m. He was unsuccessful on his first attempt, but the crowd erupted as he cleared the bar on his second attempt. He was done for the night after that clearance.