Southeastern’s Devin King continuing to put up big pole vault marks in redshirt season

\HAMMOND, La. – Southeastern Louisiana senior pole vaulter Devin King may be redshirting the 2017 indoor season but that has not stopped him from posting personal-best numbers.

King, a four-time All-American for Southeastern, opened the year with a victory while competing unattached at the LSU Purple Tiger Invitational, then finished second in the elite men’s division at the UCS Spirit National Pole Vault Summit in Reno, Nevada with a personal-best vault of 18 feet, 11.5 inches (5.78 meters).

“The meet before that, it was the highest height I ever started a season and that put me in a good position to go to Reno and jump the highest I ever jumped,” King said. “It was just a perfect day for PRing and Reno is just one of those places that helps you PR. From the beginning, it was just a great set up to jump high and I just took advantage of it.”

King’s vault of 18-4.5 (5.60 meters) at LSU qualified him for the USA Track & Field (USATF) Indoor Championships scheduled for Feb. 16-18 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. King’s mark in Reno would have qualified him for the World Championships but all the elite men’s results were vacated after the pegs that the crossbar rests on were found to be too long. King had his mark erased despite not touching the bar on any of his vaults until he missed at 19 feet.

That qualifying mark is King’s goal the remainder of the indoor season, starting with the LSU Bayou Bengal Invitational next Friday.

“Right now, I have to jump it again because it didn’t last,” King said. “I’m still chasing that mark and that’s what I’m looking forward to with these next meets coming up.”

King, the two-time defending Southland Conference outdoor champion in the vault, will compete for Southeastern in the outdoor season before wrapping up his collegiate career in the indoor season in 2019. He said it has been kind of strange this indoor season competing unattached.

“I’ve been here four years and it’s the first time I’m not with the team,” King said. “It’s a weird feeling going into a meet without the Southeastern name on my chest. But I still have another indoor season and I’m looking forward to that next year.”

With former Southeastern head coach Sean Brady, who also oversaw the jumps and vaults, taking a job at Texas A&M this offseason, current head coach Corey Mistretta brought in former Olympian Erica Fraley to help out with the vaults. Fraley helped King while he was at Jewel Sumner High School.

“It’s been great,” King said. “She’s been my high school coach so she knows me well and I think that is why we work so well together. One of the biggest advantages of us having worked together is that we can communicate during a meet.”

Fraley said King has made big strides since he was in high school.

“Obviously he is older and he is a more well-developed athlete now being a college kid instead of a high school kid,” Fraley said. “He has a lot more experience under his belt. I think working with different coaches always expands an athlete’s ability to learn their sport and think about what they are doing in their sport. I definitely feel like Devin is much more well-rounded and aware of different mindsets and different coaching approaches. He has grown a lot from that in college and now I’ve come back and started coaching him again.”

Fraley said King has shown he can hit the marks he needs to continue to climb the ladder in his sport. He now just needs to do it on a consistent basis.

“One of the things that he learned a lot in high school was just the consistencies of being able to perform at that same expectation level week-in and week-out and that consistency will hit the big marks,” Fraley said. “We are going to try to do that this season too. He has already shown he can come out and put the big marks up there. It’s going to be a matter of how consistency we can get that done.”

Fraley notes King is still young as far as pole vaulters go.

“You look at Olympians and they are 26, 28 years old when they make the Olympic team,” Fraley said. “I think for him, it’s a matter of how well does he continue the improvement that he has shown over the years and if he stays focus when he is done with college and is competing professionally.”