Ross Pfeifle making it look easy (Northern State)

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Pfeifle making it look easy
By Andrew Cutler, Journal staff | Saturday, February 14, 2009


Northern State’s Ross Pfeifle has made top five finishes in the pole vault look fairly easy.

The senior from Rapid City has four top five finishes during the indoor track and field season, including setting a new school record and an NCAA provisional qualifying mark last month, which means he will be in the running to earn a spot in the Division II indoor championships in March.

Pfeifle’s big day came on Jan. 24 and helped the Wolves to a pair of dual meet wins over Jamestown College. Pfeifle was one of two NSU athletes to post an NCAA provisional qualifying mark with a jump of 15 feet, 9 inches to win the event by more than a foot. The vault shattered his personal best by a foot.

“My first reaction was that I made the height,” Pfeifle said. “It was national qualifying, which was really what I was trying to get too. Breaking a school record is awesome.”

Pfeifle’s broke a 7-year-old NSU indoor record set by Ryan Wilhelm. The old record was 15-7 1/4.

“I was running really well that day and I grabbed a bigger pole than I’d ever gotten on,” Pfeifle said of his record-breaking vault. “We moved it up from 15-1 to 15-9 and I took off, planted hard and flew.”

Pfeifle broke the record on his first attempt and just missed later on that day at 16 feet.

“When you are doing everything right, that’s a great feeling,” he said. “To keep going and get on bigger stuff and go higher.”

Going higher has been something Pfeifle has been doing since the indoor season started in December.

The Rapid City Stevens graduate has also cleared 15-5, doing that at the North Dakota State University Bison Open, to finish fifth, and 15-0, at the Concordia College Cobber Open, for a fourth-place finish.

Pfeifle also got the chance to compete against some of the best vaulters in the nation at the 2009 National Pole Vault Summit, held in Reno, Nev., last month.

Pfeifle cleared 14-9 in the competition portion of the summit, good for a 20th place tie. The mark, to that point, set a new personal indoor best for him, a mark that would ultimately fall a few weeks later.

Pfeifle, who has been pole vaulting since his junior year at Stevens High School, began working for his senior season during the fall months.

“Really began lifting differently and harder,” he said. “Started doing a lot more speed stuff. That’s pretty much my downfall, I’m slow. Sort of.”

Even with everything Pfeifle has accomplished, he still wants one thing — to go higher.

“(Sixteen feet) is the next goal,” he said. “It’s probably going to take (a jump of) over 16 feet to get to nationals. An automatic qualifying to nationals is 16-5. So a jump of 16 is not out of the question, but hopefully, I can get the automatic qualifying.”