Editor’s note: This story was republished with permission from the Montana Kaimin, the student-run newspaper at the University of Montana. See the newspaper’s website at
MISSOULA, Mont. — When Erica Fraley first started pole vaulting, her high school coach was worried she wouldn’t be able to succeed. Fraley had lost one of her eyes when she was 4 months old and her coach worried it would hinder her.
Fraley started in cross-country, but shifted to pole vaulting when it was allowed for high school girls in 1994. When she joined her freshman year — she was Erica Boren back then — female pole vaulting at the high school level had only been allowed in Oregon for two years. Fraley’s coach had been looking for athletes to compete in the event because he didn’t want to lose the opportunity to score more team points. Fraley wanted to try, but her coach had serious doubts.
She didn’t let that stop her.
“I think I got stubborn when people said, ‘You can’t pole vault with one eye,’” Fraley said.
Fraley helped pioneer women’s pole vaulting in Oregon. Despite not being a year-round track athlete, she won her state division.
Her early career as pole vaulter wasn’t the center of her life though. She was also involved in a myriad of other organizations including 4-H and her school’s forestry club, and was state president of Distributive Education Clubs of America in her senior year
After graduating from Philomath High School in Philomath, Oregon, in 1998, she went to Texas A&M and competed in pole vault. Before this, she hadn’t really considered her success. She thought of pole vaulting as just another one of her high school activities.
“Without coaches reaching out to me I would have never considered going to college to pole vault,” Fraley said.
Even in college, she wasn’t sure of her commitment to the sport. While she didn’t doubt her passion, she found her time was stretched too thin with training taking up a large portion of her time.
“I was feeling that restriction of the athlete label,” Fraley said. “I was feeling drawn away from athletics and wanted to go be a student who was driving in the direction of being a business student.”
She quit the team after her sophomore year. But soon after, she realized her mistake.
“I started dreaming about pole vault, and then I started not sleeping cause I was thinking about pole vault,” Fraley said.
Three weeks after she quit she went back to her coach who she described as level-headed. He understood the thought she had put into the decision to leave and come back, Fraley said.
That return was a turning point in her pole vaulting career. She went from going through the motions of training like she was prior to quitting to really caring and focusing on what she was doing while training.
During her time at Texas A&M, she won two Big 12 Conference titles, but she also grew her love for the sport. After graduating with her degree in marketing, she decided to stick with the sport.
She spent the next several years training in Texas, but couldn’t find the right environment for her development.
“Just because it’s a great environment for other people doesn’t mean it’s right for you,” Fraley said.
To find her crowd, she decided to move her training to Louisiana, where she lived from 2005 to 2008. Training to be a world-class athlete was difficult. Fraley struggled to fund and support her training. On top of working 40 hours for a real estate agent and managing a health club, she trained 20 hours a week.
In 2004, she made the Olympic trials, and in 2008 she made the United States Olympic team. While she didn’t medal in the Olympics, she achieved her goal of making the team.
“There was a moment where I looked around and consciously thought, ‘There’s no big difference between me and everybody else out there. I’m part of this,’” Fraley said.
She did not stop there. After the Olympics, she had four more competitions in 2008. At the end of that season, after events in Brussels, Belgium and Shanghai, China, she sat down and contemplated.
“Before I’d start training again I would sit down and ask myself, ‘Do I want to commit another year of my life to this?’” Fraley said.
She ended up committing to another year, but in January of 2009, she suffered an injury and never fully recovered. So she shifted her focus to continue her passion in the pole vaulting world by helping others.
Fraley quickly developed a pole vault training facility in Louisiana called the Louisiana Pole Vault Compound, and began coaching right around the time she was injured. The idea for the facility had been in her head for four years and finally brought it together in the spring of 2009.
She managed the facility for 10 years, until she moved to Pullman, Washington, with her husband where and went back to school for a master’s degree in sports management.
Her husband, Doug, had coached at Tulane University before the pair moved to Pullman. Both coached the Washington State University Track and Field team there.
They described wanting to coach in a place they would enjoy with each other. So in 2022, they came to Montana.
“It’s been a life goal of ours to be able to coach together for the same program,” Erica said.
In their first two years, the pair has found immense success in breaking records. Erica has seen three school records broken, including a 30 year record in high jump that UM athlete Erin Wilde broke in May 2024 with a jump of 5-feet-10.5 inches.
Additionally, Erica coached Shealyne McGee and Zane Johnson, who both broke Montana’s women’s and men’s outdoor pole vault records.
She also coached the men’s pole vault team to 11th in the nation last year.
Erica has drawn her coaching success and style from her own experience as a collegiate and professional athlete.
“It’s the combination of experience as a world class athlete and just the layering of years of experience in working with young people,” Doug said.
But Erica’s coaching mentality doesn’t end when athletes step off the track.
“I think her athletes feel very comfortable being able to come to her with off the field problems,” Doug said. “That trust that she builds with them off the field carries over to when she’s actually coaching them.”
But Erica is humble about her success.
“It’s always easy to look good as a coach if you have the right athletes,” she said.
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Publish date : 2024-09-20 10:51:00
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