Soaring high

FAMU pole vaulter Kiara Ivy goes through a warm up before the start of competition.
Photo courtesy FAMU athletics

By St. Clair Murraine

Outlook staff writer

Kiara Ivy was looking for something to do after deciding that she had enough of gymnastics.

A sophomore at Gainesville High School at the time, she settled on running track with an emphasis on the hurdles. That wasn’t enough, though.

She wanted to do a field event that challenged her. Pole vaulting turned out to be the fit, especially because she knew that several of the successful athletes in the event came from a gymnastics background.

 “I was always an all-around gymnast so my whole body was conditioned to deal with any condition,” she said of her choice. “I use by core, my legs (and) my back.”

Now a member of the FAMU women’s track and field team, her approach is paying dividends. Ivey won the MEAC indoor women’s pole vault title just a few weeks before FAMU followed the lead of other universities and shut down athletics over the coronavirus concerns.

At the MEAC meet, Ivy jumped 10 feet, 11.5 inches to take the title. It came on her second jump, although she made five attempts.

Ivy’s victory gave FAMU consistency in the event, following a 2019 MEAC victory by Jazmyn Dennis. The win qualified her for a berth in the NCAA East preliminaries. However, Dennis has since transferred to FSU.

What makes Ivy’s achievement impressive is that she is improving without having a specialty coach. She spent the indoor season working with Shawanna Steplight, an assistant to head coach Nadia Alexander-Pompey.

Coach Nadia Alexander-Pompey (left) and Kiara Ivy were still celebrating her MEAC pole vault win a few weeks later.
Photo by St. Clair Murraine

Ivy is one of the athletes that Alexander-Pompey inherited when she took over the track program last October, following the abrupt resignation of Darlene Moore. Alexander-Pompey, who ran at Louisiana Tech where she is the indoor and outdoor record holder in the shot put, said she is impressed with Ivy’s work ethic.

Especially how she commits to each jump, something that she credits for the consistency in Ivy’s execution.

“Once you’re in the air, you’re either going to execute or you’re going to bail out,” Alexander-Pompey said. “A bail out can happen so once you go up, you need to commit.”

That’s something that Ivy said she learned early after deciding to try pole vaulting. 

“You can’t be lazy with any vault,” she said. “That’s why a lot of people don’t take to pole vault because it’s a lot of techniques, a lot of power and a lot of attacking your vault. If you don’t it’s not going to be a good vault. 

“If you don’t take your vault and mess up in the air it’s not going to get you over the bar. It’s really about how much you want it.”

Ivy, who holds her high school record for the 300 hurdles, had to fight through some difficulties in the early stage of pole vaulting. Gradually she overcame her struggles and was close to making the high school state championship meet.

“I was like, ‘I like this,” she recalled saying back then. “I’m going to continue to do it.’ ”

She became so good at the event that she won at the Bob Hayes Invitational in her senior year, becoming the first African American to win it in 54 years. She also took home a scholarship from the event.

 Recruiters didn’t come calling, though. But she got a break when she was attending an FSU meet where FAMU and Bethune-Cookman University showed interest.

As surreal as it seemed, Ivy felt a need to celebrate the possibility of taking her vole vaulting talent to college.

 “This is my moment,” she said at the time. “This is my chance to continue doing what I do.”