Fahey of Vista High achieves three personal bests to prevail in men’s intermediate section, with Del Norte’s Loy holding off younger opponents to secure victory in women’s intermediate competition

By Landon Negri for DyeStat

As the buzz wore off Saturday following an all-time national girls high school outdoor mark by New York’s Leah Pasqualetti and her historic showdown with California state record holder Paige Sommers the night before at the Vaulter Club facility in Sun City, Calif., the buzz gave way to lots of ringing.

And though Saturday’s round at the Vaulter Club Vaulter Magazine Stars and Stripes Big Red Barn Meet was the Intermediate division – and not the elite sections of Friday night – the PR bell took center stage.

Arran Fahey, an incoming senior at Vista High who vaults for North County Pole Vault Club, won the men’s intermediate division with a mark of 15 feet, 1 inch (4.60m) while leading the PR charge, setting personal bests at three consecutive marks.

Later, another North County Pole Vault member and incoming senior, Nicole Loy of Del Norte High in 4 S Ranch, won the women’s intermediate competition at 11-2.50 (3.42m) in a contest nearly upstaged by two standout performances from recent middle school graduates.

INTERVIEWS

The name Fahey is familiar to the track and field community in North San Diego County, but the more well-known family of La Costa Canyon distance runners is spelled F-a-h-y.

This Fahey survived a showdown with Ashton Zaidi of Henderson, Nev., and Adam Millett, a Corona native and Riverside City College athlete who returned from his two-year Mormon mission earlier this year.

“I had gotten a couple of good weeks of training in, but definitely my last few sessions felt like I was struggling, so I was a little concerned coming in,” Millett said. “But it’s a beautiful facility with nice runways and nice poles. And it just happened today.”

Coming into Saturday as one of the bottom three entries in the section, Fahey joined Zaidi and Millett in clearing 14-7.25 (4.45m), before missing their first two attempts at 15-1.

Fahey then cleared dramatically on his final try. Zaidi and Millett followed by missing their final attempts.

“I was at the back of the runway and I got on the 15-foot pole for the first time in my life,” Fahey said, “and I gripped it and ripped it, and it happened, so I was excited …”

Millett, a former Southern Section Masters qualifier returning from an LDS mission in January and enrolled at Riverside City College. He got in two outdoor meets before the COVID-19 shutdown for sports in mid-March.

“It felt so good,” Millett said of Saturday. “I love pole vault. It’s kind of my passion. I have not been able to find any place to pick up a pole and run, and so when I found this meet, it was just awesome to get back on the runway. I’m super happy with my performance. I didn’t even know if I’d hit a bar but I got quite a few, so it was awesome.”

He’s also eager for more after so little vaulting during the last two and a half years.

“From nothing to getting back on the runway was square one for me,” Millett said. “But there’s a lot of instinct to pole vault. Things started coming together pretty quickly.”

Zaidi finished third, edging a PR he just set two weeks ago at the Desert Dream - Last Hurrah meet at Poston Butte High in San Tan Valley, Ariz. He is entering his senior year at Coronado High in Henderson, Nev., near Las Vegas.

“It was a nice, close competition and I don’t think you can really get that in a lot of meets now,” Zaidi said. “Especially now, because everyone’s not really vaulting, and not a lot of track meets are going on.”

Three vaulters fell in behind the top three after missing their attempts at 14-7.25. Victory Athletics’ Danny Affleck, an outgoing senior at Aliso Niguel, took the tiebreaker at 14-1.25 (4.30m) with the fewest misses.

That put Vaulter Club’s Tristen Douglas, who will be a senior at Vista Murrieta High, in fifth, and New Englander Joseph Pasco in sixth.

North County’s Ethan Hughes, an outgoing senior at Cathedral Catholic near San Diego, placed seventh at 13-7.25 (4.15m). He was the only other competitor to clear 4 meters.

For the women, Loy was one of the few who didn’t record a personal best Saturday. She entered at 10-2.75 (3.12m) and missed just once before three unsuccessful attempts at a would-be personal best of 11-8.50 (3.57m).

Dylan Beveridge also had three missed attempts at that height, but Loy won based on fewer misses.

“I was just excited to be back into it,” Loy said. “I’ve had a mental block for the past eight months, and it was the worst, so it’s exciting to actually get to vault again.

“This was definitely good momentum for me,” she added later.

Beveridge, who is with Victory Athletics and will be entering her senior year at Aliso Niguel, joined the PR barrage when she cleared on her first attempt at 11-2.50.

She said getting past the early stages really helped remove pressure.

“All I really wanted to do was clear the first bar,” Beveridge said. “By the time I got to 10-9, I was like, ‘You know, if I don’t clear 11-3, it’s not that bad, because it would’ve been a PR, and it was.”

Then there were the two incoming freshmen.

Kelly Vander Pol was red hot from the start and jumped clean all the way until what proved to be the final height. That also meant four consecutive personal bests at 9-3 (2.82m), 9-9 (2.97m), 10-2.75, and 10-8.75 (3.27m).

Though she finished at the same height as fellow freshman-to-be Aspen Fears, sophomore-to-be Madisyn Negro, and Pure Sky Vaulting’s Allysa Carson, Vander Pol made the top-three podium based on having the fewest misses among the quartet.

Vander Pol said she hadn’t competed since last summer, but Saturday she might have put the San Diego Section, if not the state, on notice as to what the next four years could look like. She lives in San Marcos, but plans to attend Maranatha Christian in Rancho Bernardo.

“I honestly felt great,” she said. “It’s a really good feeling to be on that podium.”

Negro, who goes to Murrieta Valley, finished fourth. Fears, representing Vaulter Club, was right there, as well, in fifth place.