master wrote:I'll submit my two bits worth. I think the pits shouldn't be used as part of any school activity. However, you will be able to sell them very easily. Many of us would love to get old HS pits for use at home. There, we would be taking on the liability ourselves. You can look on ebay and check sold items and find they usually sell easily.
I'm sure they could sell easily. Half of my non vaulting time during track season back then was filled with talk of one day having a home where I could put a runway and a pit with layers of old mattresses. Having a relatively legit set of mats would be insanely cool. Unless we were to actually be able to find funding to buy a new set altogether, selling would not be an option.
Regarding rainbowgirl28's point about lawsuit risk - yeah, that's a big concern. Things just aren't like they were 20 years ago. If I hurt myself vaulting, I highly doubt my parents would have thought of suing the school. I was troubled by the new regulations for mats and even more troubled by how monopolistic getting legal seems to be. In Vermont, it appears that there are a significant number of schools no longer offering vaulting because they cannot afford proper mats, especially with the shorter seasons and usually smaller vaulting squads.
Regarding poles, they don't really "age". They only become unsafe by damage, usually by accidental spiking or the pole hitting a hard object like the standards. Look at all your poles for any significant dings or deep scratches.
Is this an opinion or generally accepted practice? The head coach seemed to think the older poles might be too old. I think we were both assuming that time could effect the fiberglass or something. I'm pretty sure the collection of poles we have from all that time ago is more than likely very damage free. Beyond inspecting for dings, deep scratches or holes, is there another way to test the integrity? Not having to buy new poles would be amazing, though I think we might anyway because we never had female vaulters, so the lightest poles we likely have are 125 or so (I'll have to check) and I'm pretty sure some of those interested girls are much lighter than that. I think I was 135 back then and used a 145 pole. I'm hoping to be down to 165 by spring, but might need to buy a pole for myself, I don't know what the "heaviest" pole we had was
As far as you coming back to vaulting, congratulations. You'll find a lot of support and help here. You are coming back at 35, I came back at 56 (now 61) and am having a great time!
It looks like it. I was
highly encouraged by reading the thread with Tom and someone else about testing pole weight theories and seeing much older people than me only 5 years back into it. Since I had a shoulder surgery a few years ago (non-dominant arm) I'm concerned, but plan on really building the stretch and support back into my shoulders.
PS When you are looking for something on PVP, the search feature is very useful.
I did search on the pole age and practice question. Wording of searches is often important. This also gave me a good opportunity to jump in with a post.
Sorry if I wandered OT for the coach forum. I'm kind of excited.
