By Jerry Reimenschneider
Reading Eagle
April 24th, 2006
It's hard to say which hold is firmer.
The one Tory Toso has on the pole vault, or the one the pole vault has on Tory Toso.
Since an ankle injury tanked the finish to her sophomore track and field season last spring, Toso has been a girl possessed. She took about a week or so to collect herself emotionally after the letdowns at 2005's Firing and District 3 meets, then went to work.
The Wilson junior trained all summer, including a trip to Nevada for the National Pole Vault Summit. She trained all winter with Wilson vault coach Tony Dodds. Now she's supplementing her spring regimen, which already includes daily workouts with Dodds and Wilson's hurdlers, with weekly trips to Allentown 's Vertical Assault pole-vaulting club.
“It was upsetting the way the season ended last year,” Toso said. “But I guess it was good, because it motivated me for this year. It's working out pretty well.”
Add the art of understatement to Toso's talents, which were on full display while she shattered her own Berks record at the 45th Annual Leonard Stephan Meet at West Lawn. A week after setting a new mark with an 11-foot vault in North Carolina , Toso cleared 12 feet during competition in Wilson 's gym Sunday, when the meet resumed with a fury after a rain-shortened Saturday.
Toso's vault, which also obliterated the existing Stephan record by 3 feet, represented the only record-setting girls performance.
But only Toso rewrote the record book, something she seems destined to do several more times. Especially since she remains unsatisfied with her technique.
“I'm swinging up to the pole,” she said. “I leave it too early. . . . I just want to start doing it right, and hopefully the better heights will come after that.”
As if the heights she's already scaled aren't heady enough.
© 2006 Vertical Assault