http://www.kansan.com/news/2010/jan/22/ ... rs/?sportsTransfer pole vaulters make early impact
By Samantha Anderson
Friday, January 22, 2010
The Kansas track team is starting the season with three new female pole vaulters who transferred from different colleges. Each one is ready to make her own contribution.
Two of the vaulters became Jayhawks at the beginning of the fall semester, junior Jaci Perryman and sophomore Alex Colvin. Junior Tara Turnbull is joining the team this semester. Each girl has her own reasons for why starting over again at Kansas was the best choice for them.
Coming out of high school, Kansas was originally an option for Perryman. Tom Hays, vertical jumps coach, recruited her and she was very interested in the program and the opportunity to learn from Hays. However, the distance from her hometown of Phoenix, Ariz., made the transition to Kansas a little too daunting, and Perryman decided to stay closer to home and attend Arizona.
Perryman graduated from Arizona a year early and because she redshirted her freshman year, she still had two more years of eligibility after graduation. She decided to come to Kansas to work on her graduate degree. This gave Perryman the opportunity to utilize her last two years of competition and finally learn from Coach Hays.
“I’ve always wanted to work with him,” said Perryman. “I was excited to get this opportunity to do so. He definitely was a big factor in deciding to come here.”
Perryman is already making a difference. In the last three meets she was the top female pole-vaulter for the team.
“We expect her to be an impact person at conference,” Hays said.
While Perryman was moving farther away from her family, Culvin, of Monument, Colo., was moving closer to home. Culvin’s transfer from San Diego State University brought her closer to her family and also allowed her to join her sister, Kate, on Kansas’ pole vaulting team.
“I saw how much she loved Kansas and just loved competing here and loved everything about Lawrence. It made the decision a lot easier,” said Culvin.
The newest transfer, Turnbull, originally from Chesterfield, Mo., transferred from Purdue after her coach left the school.
“I wanted to go somewhere with a good coach and I did a little research and Coach Hays had quite good credentials so I went here,” said Turnbull.
Coach Hays has experience with transfers and his coaching style gives them time to learn the way they learn best.
“What I do is the first four weeks of the fall I’m trying to learn how that athlete learns and then I’m trying to adapt my coaching style to what they need,” Hays said.
Hays doesn’t cater to the athlete, but he looks at what is the most effective method in getting an athlete to improve, whether it be watching films or learning hands-on. This could be one of the reasons his transfer athletes are making an impact already. Turnbull finished in third place in both the meets she competed in as a Jayhawk.
Each of these girls, all with different backgrounds and reasons for coming to Kansas, all met many of the same difficulties.
One big difference is the practices.
“They are pretty much entirely different from the way that we warm up to the way that we do our mechanical workouts,” Turnbull said.
The changes, while difficult at first, can make the girls better.
“I’m kind of starting from the beginning again being with a new coach,” said Perryman. “So there’s a lot of things that I have been improving that may not show immediately and if I can keep building on that I feel like I’ve had a great start to my improvements.”
Transfer athletes don’t just have to worry about practice. They also must adapt to a whole new campus away from the school that had become their home in the previous years.
Many transfer athletes don’t know anyone on campus and it can be hard to initially branch out.
“At first it was a little difficult to meet a lot of people and go out, so you just have to be outgoing and be open to meeting people,” Colvin said.
With time, however, most athletes discover that Jayhawk spirit.
“As time goes on, you know you just grow,” said Colvin. “You bleed crimson and blue.”