Several top athletes in California girls pole vault final, most notably Downing and Fears, gained valuable insight and experience on and off the runway at Vaulter Club facility in Menifee, where Bouma family hosted several competitions to keep event thriving during COVID-19 pandemic

By Landon Negri for DyeStat

At a time when the country was essentially shut down, a pole vault facility rose like a Phoenix of sorts on the west side of a suburban Southern California town.

For more than a year, the Big Red Barn facility in Menifee carried the pole vault community.

And if you needed any more proof, consider the girls pole vault final at the 103rd CIF State Track and Field Championships at Buchanan High’s Veterans Memorial Stadium in Clovis, where much of the field competed at Big Red Barn meets at some point in the past three years.

“We got to see a lot of vaulters,” said Vista Murrieta junior Aspen Fears, the two-time CIF-Southern Section Masters girls pole vault champion.

“I remember just watching girls like Kortney Oates, Paige Sommers and Leah Pasqualetti, and my mouth would be wide open because of how cool it was.”

The latest payoff comes this week. Included in the field at Veterans Memorial Stadium will be Fears, as well as the top girls vaulter from the San Diego Section, La Costa Canyon junior Iliana Downing.

Both athletes were just eighth-graders in the spring of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic halted high school sports in March, just after many teams competed in their first meets of the season. What proved to be the final high school sporting events in the state, in fact, were the regional finals of the basketball playoffs.

As sports sat idle and while debate raged over what should and shouldn’t be done with athletic events around the world, Vaulter Magazine founder and Vaulter Club head coach Doug Bouma found land to build a small facility with a regulation pit.

Scott Fears, Aspen’s father, ran a business on the property, which, of course, featured a big red barn as its centerpiece.

They scurried to build the facility in just six weeks and began offering it up for practices.

Later, meets were held there, the most notable June 26 of that year, when Leah Pasqualetti of Orchard Park, N.Y., set a new all-time prep outdoor record – as well as the American Under-20 outdoor standard – by clearing 14 feet, 8.25 inches (4.48m) at the Vaulter Club Vaulter Magazine Stars and Stripes Big Red Barn meet.

There was opposition to the Red Barn facility due to the mask mandates and restrictions that were in place at that time. But the mandates were followed, competition was kept to small groups, and to the best of Bouma’s knowledge, no one at the event became ill with COVID.

Looking on that day were budding competitors like Downing and Aspen Fears. And not only did the vaulting community keep continuity for competition, but the ability to rub shoulders with elite performers for the younger competitors was a bonus.

“I am very grateful for it,” Aspen Fears said. “I definitely think I wouldn’t be where I am today without it.”

While Fears had already been vaulting, Downing was just getting into it, with her first pole vault competition actually coming at the Big Red Barn.

Downing had previously played soccer and still runs on some relays for the Mavericks.

"I just think that competing at the Red Barn meet, it was such a blessing in disguise for all the vaulters," said Downing, who jumped 13-3 (4.03m) last week, but has a personal-best 14-0 (4.27m), set May 5 at the Coastal Conference League Finals.

“Especially for me, because that was sort of when I started.”

Of the 21 female vaulters that enter this weekend with seeded marks of 11-3 (3.43m) or higher, five competed unattached that day in Menifee – Fears, Downing, Murrieta Valley’s Madisyn Negro, Great Oak’s Shayna Hinds and Poway’s Evangeline Thomson.

Downing’s 14-foot clearance is equal to the No. 7 high school mark nationally this season.

Later, Poway’s Avery Hilliard and Paso Robles’ Peyton Bedrosian also competed unattached in Big Red Barn meets. 

Events held at the facility in 2020 and 2021 attracted national competitors as well.

In addition to Sommers and Pasqualetti, twin sisters Hana Moll and Amanda Moll from Capital High in Washington representing Northwest Pole Vault Club – the only two American prep female athletes in history to achieve 15-foot clearances – also vaulted at meets.

That was certainly cause for some vindication for the Big Red Barn.

“I feel like that when everybody else shut down,” Bouma said, “we stepped up and said, ‘Hey, we have to do what's right for the kids.’”

Sommers was second to Pasqualetti at 14-1.75 (4.31m) at that Stars and Stripes meet and has gone on to compete at Duke following her record-setting high school career at Westlake. Her younger brother, Cade Sommers, also competed in Big Red Barns meets and is scheduled to vault this weekend in the boys state final.

“Paige Sommers’ dad said her whole college career was saved by (our) facility,” said Bouma, recounting a conversation with John Sommers.

Bouma said the Big Red Barn still holds three meets a year – one around July 4, one at Thanksgiving, and one around Christmas.

Mike Wagenveld of the Escondido-based North County Pole Vault Club, who, outside of the high school season, has worked with many of the San Diego Section vaulters competing in Clovis this weekend, said the cause might’ve even been something higher.

“It was something that gave these kids something to latch onto during one of the darkest periods of their childhood, where everything got shut down around them,” Wagenveld said. “If they improved in the vault – awesome. That was just a fringe benefit. These kids were taking care of their mental health.”