EUGENE, Ore. — Luke Barrick’s brain only thinks in one direction.
Higher.
The Onalaska High School senior pole vaulter proved he’s the best in the Pacific Northwest by winning the Oregon Relays title, topping the competition with a best leap of 15 feet and 11 inches at Hayward Field Saturday afternoon.
His jump would have been the best jump in 2B state history if done at any point last season. In fact, Barrick now owns the top three vaults in the history of the classification. After easily clearing 15-11 on his first attempt, Barrick considered a shot to break the 2B record again at over 16-4, but instead, he decided to go for it all.
He set the bar to 16-8.75, which would have set the Oregon Relays high school meet record by two feet. Barrick attempted the jump three times but came up short.
“I was thinking a lot bigger because that’s where I was thinking I was gonna go,” Barrick said. “It feels amazing. Not the best performance, but I still won the meet.”
Barrick tried a significantly different pole than his previous meet. At the Rainier Icebreaker on March 21, he used a 15-foot, 7-inch, 190-pound pole. He decided to switch to a 16-foot, 5-inch, 185-pound pole, which he said he was comfortable with but is still taking time to dial in the mechanics.
“I was comfortable with it, but I didn’t get a lot of time on the runway. I probably could’ve taken a few reps at the shorter heights,” Barrick, an Idaho State University commit, said. “It’s something to learn from.”
Barrick was joined in Eugene by his club coach Rick Baggett and Onalaska coach Carla Hoppie.
“Rick is the coach who took me from 15 feet to 17 feet. And I wouldn’t probably be doing pole vault if it wasn’t for Carla Hoppie,” Barrick said of his coaches.
Barrick was one of three Onalaska Loggers to make the trip to Hayward Field this weekend. Junior thrower Ethan Thayer and sophomore runner Brodey Triana also competed for the small Lewis County school on the big stage in Track Town USA.
Thayer established a new personal record in the shot put Friday with a fourth-place throw of 58-0.25. He also finished as the runner-up in discus Saturday, throwing 171-9, only outmatched by an earth-shattering toss of 214-2 by Mead two-time state champion and future Oregon Duck Simon Rosselli.
“I was really nervous at first. But I told myself that it’s just like any other arena. It’s just a big stadium,” Thayer said. “I just took a deep breath and I threw. I wasn’t really sure how I would do because I’ve never gone to something like this. I was expecting the adrenaline to help me PR.”
Triana came in third in his heat in the 200-meter dash and finished 38th overall at 22.91 seconds. His mark was less than a second off from his personal record of 22.6 seconds, a school record.
“I’ve had to be locked in for like two or three days. I was pretty nervous,” Triana said. “I wanted to try to break the school record, but I didn’t quite get it. The whole experience was crazy. I was looking at who I was racing against and it was all 3A and 4A kids, and everybody’s older than me too. I feel like I showed these bigger schools what I could do.”
Adna’s 4x400 relay teams both competed in the event’s open Friday. While the boys quartet of Carter Duncan, Steven O’Dell, Kaden Richardson and Grayson Humphrey won the first heat at 3:37.06, the Pirates didn’t qualify for the finals, finishing 30th overall.
The girls relay team of Sophie Hagseth, Megan Stout, Muse Jones and Rhylee Beebe crossed the finish line in 4:32.85 to finish 59th overall and seventh out of eight teams in the first heat.
