Megan Clark: Portrait of a Champion

DURHAM, N.C. - As the daughter of a career Army officer, Megan Clark has been on the move her entire life, changing addresses about as often as most people change their oil. She attended 10 different schools during her K-12 years, including high schools in three states. When Clark completed the spring semester at Duke earlier this month, she set a new PR for academic longevity with three consecutive years at the same school.

With collegiate stability as her current backdrop, Clark now does most of her moving down the runways of track and field facilities in hot pursuit of athletic PRs. She has developed into one of the top pole vaulters in the nation and is in the midst of a career year. With school records, ACC championships and All-America honors among her 2015 achievements, Clark has enjoyed perhaps the best year of any female athlete at Duke — and it's not over yet. Her junior year may be in the books academically, but her athletic season is just now reaching its zenith with the major championship meets slated this month and next.

“I love this time of year,” Clark said just before a recovery workout during semester exams. “School is ending, so we have all the time in the day to pole vault, lift and run, which I think is fantastic. We train all year for these couple of meets, which is stressful, but at the end of the day…I approach it with that mindset that I'm doing the same thing (as usual). The runway's the same, the bar's the same, I'm on the same poles, it's the same event.

“It's not like I'm a sprinter where I have to compete with people who are standing next to me. I don't have to strategize about an 800-meter race. I just have to go and do what I've been doing.”

What Clark has been doing is rising to new heights in one of her sport's most technical disciplines. She has finished either first or second in all 13 meets she has entered this season, most recently claiming the gold medal at the ACC Outdoor Championships on May 16. Previously she took first place at the ACC Indoor Championships and second place at NCAA Indoors, feats that led to her selection as the ACC Field Performer of the Year for indoor track.

Twice this year she has vaulted 14 feet, 9 inches — her personal best — to break her own Duke indoor and outdoor records. Her first clearance at that mark came at NCAA Indoors and tied the all-time ACC mark. Outdoors it happened at the Duke Invitational, the Blue Devils' baptismal meet for their new Morris Williams Stadium. Through mid-May, her 14-9 ranks as the third best jump in the country this outdoor season.

It's interesting to note that these high-flying results have all come in the season following her self-described breakout year of 2014. There's no question Clark set the bar higher as a sophomore by clearing 14 feet for the first time, breaking Duke's indoor and outdoor marks, qualifying for her first NCAA meet (earning second team All-America indoors) and tying for sixth place at USATF Outdoor Nationals last summer.

But it would be too simplistic to view her junior season as a product of natural progression and carryover from one year to the next, because there was plenty of breakdown and breakup associated with the breakout. Between last season and this, she changed poles from carbon fiber to fiberglass and also rebuilt her jumping technique — two far-from-trivial factors that gave Clark pause for concern in fall practice when she couldn't match her previous year's heights.

But now that she's had time to adopt, assimilate and adjust to a more consistent technical model for her runway approach and takeoff, a sky's-the-limit feeling prevails whenever she plants and launches.

“She was very inconsistent with her run in high school and her first couple of years here,” said Duke associate track coach Shawn Wilbourn, who trains Clark. “So it's been rebuilding her technique and her rhythm on the runway so she's more consistent at the takeoff spot.

“We've lengthened her approach so she can utilize the speed that she has. She's generating more velocity at the takeoff than she was a year ago. When you can convert that horizontal velocity into vertical velocity, that's how you go high.”

Clark also had to dial up her mental toughness after four poles broke on her in competition last year. She had switched from fiberglass to carbon for her sophomore year to lighten the load she carried down the runway, but too many times they snapped during her swing — most traumatically at the NCAA regional meet, on the jump she needed to qualify for NCAA outdoor nationals. She was never injured on a break, but after the season she decided to minimize that risk and the accompanying mental stress by going back to fiberglass.

“I broke one at ACC Indoors at Clemson — there's a piece of that pole still in the ceiling there,” she noted, able to laugh about it a year later. “I broke one at Penn Relays and then at regionals, so we decided that was not the way to go anymore.

“I'm happy now, I trust the poles. I was finding on the other poles that because they kept breaking, I wasn't trusting them and I wasn't inverting as well. I wasn't swinging as well. There's always that doubt in the back of your mind. Now there's no doubt in my mind that I'm going to be safe.”

“A lot of vaulters, their career would be done because they'd be scared to take off. They'd think the next one is going to break, too,” added Wilbourn. “She was able to overcome that. We got on a different pole brand and she has taken off since she's overcome that.”

Clark first started pole vaulting her freshman year of high school in Virginia, selecting the event at the start of track practice because the coach was handing out Popsicles. There was no fear of heights to overcome because she had become accustomed to flying through the air as a youth gymnast and competitive cheerleader.

After earning all-state honors her first year in the sport, Clark's career began to accelerate when her family moved to New York her sophomore year and she joined the Hudson Valley Flying Circus, a specialized pole vault academy. With more technical instruction to channel her physical gifts, she won the New York state high school championship as a junior, then did the same as a senior in Georgia when her family moved again, to Fort Benning.

Clark's high school in Georgia didn't officially offer pole vaulting, but Clark's mother Simona had attended virtually all of her daughter's practices in New York so she assumed coaching duties. Her dad, then Col. Ron Clark (he's now a brigadier general), videotaped every performance while her older brother Matthew cheered her every clearance, creating Team Clark, which has continued to support Megan's efforts at Duke.

Wilbourn began recruiting Clark when she was a prep junior, worked with her in one of his summer camps and eventually offered her a scholarship even though there were other candidates with better credentials.

“When I first saw her it was, wow!” Wilbourn recalled. “She was very raw technically, but she had what it takes to jump really high. I didn't foresee her jumping this high this early. She's really excelled and put things together. It's been great to coach her because she's very coachable.

“She went 13 feet one time her junior year (in high school). I watched the video and it wasn't a clean make. She hit the bar pretty good and it stayed up there. She did it one time, and typically you're looking for them to do it more than once. But the explosiveness that Megan had and some of the things she was doing — I knew if we could clean up her run and fix her plant that she had the potential.”

Now with one year of college remaining, Clark is at the point where potential meets realization, where Team Clark feels the full influence of Team Wilbourn — not just Coach Wilbourn, who has dissected every aspect of Clark's vault and has been devoted to her athletic development, but also Dr. Makeba Wilbourn, Shawn's wife, who is a Duke psychology professor and Clark's academic advisor as she navigates her psychology major, her minors in biology and chemistry and her pre-med curriculum.

“I love Duke,” Clark stated. “Athletically the administration couldn't be more supportive. And on the academic side I love the fact that all of our professors are still professionals in their field so they are doing research and telling you about what gets them excited, not just teaching a course they memorized 50 years ago. I think that's awesome.”

As awesome, perhaps, as flying through the air and over a bar on the way to barrier-breaking accomplishments?

“The best feeling in the world is clearing a new height, a new PR, and then falling over on the other side,” she said. “It's basically in slow motion and you can't believe what you just did. Pole vaulting is incredibly frustrating in that you can get a lot better technically and still not jump any higher. But those moments when you do, you are off the charts excited about it.

“It's one of those things that's unpredictable and you never really know what's going to happen — and I think that's very exciting. Coach thinks it's very stressful. But it's just a phenomenal sport.”

After completing her 2015 sweep of ACC titles at the league's outdoor championships in Tallahassee, Clark now looks forward to returning to Florida for the first round of NCAA competition in Jacksonville May 28-30. She hopes her performance there qualifies her for a trip to Eugene, Ore., for her first NCAA outdoor national championship meet June 10-13. She has already qualified for the USATF nationals June 24-28, also in Eugene.

#GoDuke

Megan Clark: Portrait of a Champion

Players Mentioned

Megan Clark

Duke information

Megan Clark: Portrait of a Champion

Related News

Players Mentioned

Megan Clark

Related Videos

Duke information