Consumption and Costs in the Pole Vault

Consumption in the Pole Vault

As many who have played sports before know, they can be an expensive investment. My first blog talked about the motivations and emotions that are involved in pole vaulting. My second blog analyzed how habits can come into play. This blog will discuss the consumption of goods and services involved in learning to pole vault compared to continuing to pole vault at the college level.

Initially learning to pole vault can be super expensive. Especially for the high school itself, there is a lot of equipment necessary to be able to vault at all, which results in a lot of costs, “negative results of consumption experiences” (Babin, 2016, pp. 5). The first thing of course, is the pits. 5 giant mats, with a large cover mat, a box cover, and standard covers. Just this combination of mats necessary to meet regulations can cost somewhere between $15,000-30,000. You also need standards and a runway of course.

The next expense for high schools is supplying poles for the various kids who choose to try pole vaulting. There are also safety regulations on poles, a vaulter has to be jumping on a pole with a weight rating that is above their weight so that they don’t break it. There are a very wide variety of brands, weights, lengths, flex points, etc, physical characteristics, “tangible elements or the parts of a message that can be sensed”, that differentiate each pole from another (Babin, 2016, 71). This is where many high schools fall short as they don’t provide the right poles. Why is it so difficult for high schools to supply the right poles?

As each vaulter improves, they keep needing bigger and bigger poles. It is also common for serious vaulters to vault on multiple poles at one competition. For example, in college now I travel with 9-10 poles for every meet. Each pole costs $400-1,000. You also need a bag to travel your poles in so that they don’t get scratched. If a pole gets compromised it is more likely to break. A pole bag costs $200-500. These are all costs typically covered by the school.

This is a catalog with the specs of all the different poles that this one brand offers.

My high school did not have a pole vault coach, so my family invested a lot of money in finding coaching. This was intentional learning, “the process by which consumers set out to specifically learn information devoted to a certain subject” (Babin, 2016, pp 64). This learning also had particular costs. Some Sundays we drove 4+ hours in order to practice for 2. We paid for college track camps, club fees, anything to try to get enough coaching to learn the sport. My family also bought several used poles from one of the coaches that I worked with because my school only supplied me with one in the range that I needed. I think if I recall correctly we spent $500 for two used poles. We made day trips to Indiana for a couple hours of practice. Nike is the only company that makes pole vault specific spikes and they run at about $120.

High school athletic departments also have to pay to enter their track team into meets during the season. The only season high school teams take part in is the outdoor spring season. There is also a high school indoor season which I participated in my Junior and Senior year. These meets had entry fees ranging from $10-20 as well as travel costs to and from the meets and sometimes hotels. There are also a lot of summer pole vault competitions and I participated in all of them.

As any other sport kids participate in, there are a lot of costs associated with all the equipment, coaching, clubs, etc that are necessary to learn, improve and eventually be the best. All of these investments that my parents made were worth it because they allowed me to continue vaulting at the B1G Ten level.

Even as an athlete without any scholarship money, consumption behavior in the pole vault is pretty different in college because the team budget is so much larger. We have a coach, we are supplied with excessive amounts of workout clothes and we don’t have to buy our own running shoes or spikes. Athletes get free breakfast every school day, free dinners occasionally and snacks at the track every day. We essentially have free health care with the ability to see athletic trainers and team doctors and even specialists whenever we need to. Not to mention tutors, other academic services, flights, hotels, per diem, and the list goes on. Although I don’t pay for really anything out of pocket to continue vaulting, I definitely consume more goods and services to vault at this level.

Works Cited

Babin, B., & Harris, E. (2016). In CB 7 (7th ed., pp. 5,64,71). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Footlocker. (2017). Nike ZOOM PVII – Mens http://www.footlocker.com/product/model:89734/sku:17404100/nike-zoom-pv-ii-mens/white/black/?cm=&SID=5403&inceptor=1&cm_mmc=SEM-_-Non-Branded-_-_cat%3Afootlocker.com-_-Google&gclid=CLG6ibH059ICFZW1wAod4-4G9A

UCS Spirit. (2014, October 31) UCS Track and Field Catalog 2015 (pp. 4-25). https://issuu.com/ucsspirit/docs/ucs_track_and_field_catalog_2015