Former Columbus High star ready for shot at Olympic trials
The Columbus area may have some Olympic ties once the track and field portion of the 2016 Summer Games get going in Rio de Janeiro next month.
Megan Clark, a 2012 graduate of Columbus High School and graduate of Duke University this past spring, is one of the favorites in the upcoming Olympic trials in track and field. She will compete on Friday at Hayward Field on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene in the pole vault.
“Columbus High really prepared me for my transition to Duke,” Clark said. “It’s a very challenging school, and the curriculum helped me prepare for that. The track program at Columbus is really flexible, too. They actually allowed my mom to coach me as well as a couple of other vaulters at Columbus. They were very welcoming and flexible, so I could continue to train at a high level.”
Like many others in Columbus, the Army brought her to the area via her father being stationed at Fort Benning. The transition into Columbus was easier than most, according to Clark.
“I went to three different high schools, but before I moved to Columbus, I was already on the competitive cheer team there,” she said. “Being able to come to school and have a group of friends already and be on a team and be a part of the community was a really big deal for me.”
Clark has already had a highly decorated career in the sport. She set a Georgia High School Association Class 3A record her senior year at Columbus in 2012 with a 12-foot, 2-inch vault. This past fall, the Duke University senior added an Atlantic Coast Conference record to her collection with a vault just over 15 feet, 2 inches, the third-best mark in NCAA outdoor track and field history. She was also named the ACC Women’s Field Performer of the Year.
Clark says that the training is quite rigorous for the sport.
“It’s so much work,” she said. “We do Olympic lifting three hours a week, we sprint two to three times a week, and we vault two or three times a week. We spend all fall doing endurance training and a longer distance sprint just to build the base there. It takes a lot of coordination, a lot of upper body strength, and a lot of Kinesthetic awareness, so we spend a lot of time also doing gymnastics and things other than the vault itself.”
Besides the physical aspect of vaulting, the timing and technical aspect of planting the pole at the right time to maximize the height of the vault is something that takes years and repetition to achieve.
“I’m still learning how to do that,” Clark said with a laugh. “It’s absolutely experience. I’ve been vaulting for eight years now, so I learned a lot along the way and technically, I’ve made a lot of progress. It gets easier as you go. Some of the best vaulters in the world are in their 30s because it’s very technical; it takes a lot of practice and a lot of skill.”
After graduation from Duke, Clark has had time to focus for what will prove to be a whirlwind summer. After the Olympic trials in Oregon, she will head to El Salvador for the North American, Central American and Caribbean outdoor track and field championships.
“This is one of the few big meets where I have three weeks of training before,” Clark said. “It’s been really great just taking the time and focusing on just training and not having to compete every weekend. I’ve done a lot of mental training with our sports psychologist, and I think I’m ready.”
Her biggest supporters of all, her brother and parents, will be by her side as she gets ready to qualify for a spot on the big stage in Rio next month.
“My parents actually live in the U.K. right now, so it’s been very different with them for the past two weeks, but they’re doing everything they can to be there,” Clark said. “My brother’s going to the Olympic trials, since he’s interning in Seattle right now, so Team Clark is very much in support of it. They’re very excited about it. It’ll be a pretty exciting summer.”
This story was originally published July 2, 2016 at 4:31 PM with the headline "Former Columbus High star ready for shot at Olympic trials."