The CR South senior pole vaulter looked completely recovered from a knee injury.

PHILADELPHIA - On a normal day, in a normal event, Council Rock South's Victoria Worthen wouldn't have been out of her sweats as the pole vault began at the 2009 Penn Relays on Thursday afternoon.

As it stood, she forgot to take her Vertical Assault t-shirt off before beginning the competition which was a clear indication her mind was on something else.

Worthen entered the event as the top seed and the 11-foot, 1 3/4-inch opening height wouldn't have posed enough of a threat to even attempt on any other day. But the Princeton-bound senior needed that first height to build confidence and a comfort level lost over the past month in which she has been inactive due to injury.

Understand that this was not a normal day or a normal event for Worthen. Instead, this was her first meet back after she suffered a hyper-extended right knee and bone bruise at the Nike Indoor Nationals a month ago. After a week in a wheelchair and two more rehabbing her knee, she had just one week to prepare for the competition at Franklin Field.

"Right now, she's trying to get into a big-time meet without the confidence you really need to have," said Ken Worthen, her father and the Council Rock South coach, after the first round of attempts. "She needed to get that first opening height done."

Worthen, who needed three attempts at the opening height, found her confidence on a blustery day on the Penn campus and recovered enough to finish second behind Crestwood's Mandissa Marshall as both missed all three attempts at 12-5 1/2. Since both cleared 12-2, officials checked on missed attempts, and Worthen's miss and run-through during the first round left her with the silver medal.

The bigger issue of the day was whether she had returned to close to 100 percent - and the consensus was she's just fine.

"This is my first big meet since the injury," Worthen said. "It was a little nerve-racking, and I wasn't quite focused. It just seemed to not be coming together. I wasn't relaxed, and I needed to focus on one thing. Once I got over that first height, everything went a lot better."

Worthen's nerves only frayed after she missed the first attempt of the afternoon and had a run-through on the second try.

"(The injury) certainly played a little factor maybe starting off," said Mike Lawryk, the coach of the Vertical Assault Club that counts both Worthen and Marshall as members. "Normally, she wouldn't have started off at that opening bar. As we saw, she was over it, but she didn't throw her pole back. At that point, she starts thinking, 'I have a miss.' Then she ran through, and a snowball effect started.

"The amazing thing with the injury and how she started, was she got it going and all of a sudden, she was maybe the highest vaulter here."

Worthen made her first attempt at 11-5 1/2, and took two shots at 11-9, before she easily made 12-2 to set up the final round against Marshall.

"I didn't have a big expectation," Worthen said. "I wanted to make opening height. I wanted to take one height at a time to just see how my knee was feeling. It was feeling great and it still feels great, so I feel like I'm back.

"I didn't come in here expecting to win it. I haven't practiced enough in the last month to win it. I came in here hoping to do my best so far - and that's what I did."