University of Massachusets Athletics
Making The Leap: Bakanowski Raises The Bar At UMass
February 10, 2005 | Women's Track & Field
Feb. 10, 2005
Kristen Bakanowski blends her undeniable athleticism with a fierce competitive streak that may even outweigh her natural ability.
Or at least, that's what it seemed to UMass women's track and field coach Julie LaFreniere when the Minutewomen were at Boston University for a quad meet recently.
It was the second competition of the burgeoning star's collegiate career. In her debut, she won the pole vault and finished third in the 200 at the Boston Six-Way, a warm-up meet on Dec. 6.
The Algonquin grad expected to compete in both events at BU. Lafreniere didn't see it that way.
Bakanowski was getting ready for the pole vault finals and looked over to see the 200 getting ready to start. It wasn't a mistake. The coach didn't have her running in the sprint.
"She was insulted that I didn't enter her," says Lafreniere. "I had to explain it to her. Yeah, the 200 was going on, but she was going for 12 feet in the pole vault."
Truth is, Lafreniere knows how good a runner Bakanowski is and knows how good she could grow to be in the short distances. The problem is that the freshman is better in the pole vault. Much better.
So good, in fact, that Lafreniere gave her a full scholarship -- in a sport where partials are more the norm -- to vault for UMass. So good that at that BU meet, her final score of 12 feet tied a school record. So good that the record-matching vault isn't even a personal best.
Don't misread this, Bakanowski is versatile athlete, good enough that Lafreniere says she would have offered her a partial scholarship just to sprint. It's just that, well, the pole vault is her meal ticket. Not to mention her passion.
"She's a very competitive individual," says Lafreniere. "She has a combination of a passion for the event and that competitiveness. She wants to be the best, she wants to go higher and higher. Her enthusiasm is clear."
Now, the pole vault is still not all that widespread on the female side of the track. And Bakanowski got into it almost by accident.
When she entered Algonquin Regional 4 1/2 years ago, Bakanowski was strictly a soccer player. She went out for track because, for one, she knew she was fast and, for two, because it didn't interfere with her work on the pitch.
Her high school coach, Ken Peterson, was also a pole vault coach. He introduced Bakanowski to the event -- maybe the most difficult of all in track and field -- and the freshman decided to give it a shot.
"It had a combination of everything," she says. "You have to run, you have to be strong. And I've always loved heights."
Of course, she wasn't reaching very high ones right away. It was a struggle at first. She had the tools, but the technique took time.
Then, returns started coming back. A league all-star all in eight track seasons in high school, Bakanowski's progress in the vault started to sprint right by what she was doing in the 200 and 300 meters. And this, even though she was good enough to eventually be the CMass champion in the 200 and set the Class C state record in the 300.
"Before my junior year in high school, I started training at Brandeis," she says, "and I started working at pole vaulting camps. That's what really got me to be really good at it."
She gave up soccer and met vaulting guru Jeff Robbins, whom she still gets coaching from, of Airtime Athletics. Under his tutelage, she won the New England title in the event in both 2003 and 2004.
And subsequently, got that full scholarship.
The coaches at UMass can be given credit for getting Bakanowski. But they aren't going to take any for what she's doing right now. That's because what the freshman knows comes from her previous training and, to this point, the UMass coaching staff hasn't gotten all the way through to its prodigy.
It's a delicate thing, really, in a perilous competition like the pole vault. Any doubt can cause a serious injury, so trust is vital.
"(UMass vault coach and men's head coach Ken O'Brien) really knows what he's talking about, he's a good coach," says Bakanowski. "But vaulting is so dangerous that if I don't trust what he's telling me, I'll run right into the mats.
"I haven't had the time to really build it, so I don't quite trust what they're saying yet," she continues. "When the trust builds, I'll be able to really improve."
She still works out a day a week with Robbins and when she's able to take coaching from both ends, Lafreniere thinks, Bakanowski will take off.
And really, she's already not far off from being a world class competitor. Her PR is less than two feet from the Olympic-qualifying height of 14 feet and less than four from the world record of 16 feet.
Bakanowski admits that she's dreamed of being in Beijing for the 2008 Games or at the 2012 Olympiad, wherever it might be held. But it's also more than that.
"Actually," she says, "I think it's doable."
So maybe, she can look back at that meet at BU and understand Lafreniere's thinking a little better. The coach never denied that Bakanowski can be a good Division I sprinter.
All she was saying, really, was that her focus should be elsewhere. On not goodness, but greatness. And Bakanowski, pole in hand, might just agree.
***
Another note from UMass, courtesy of Lafreniere.
For a long time, the track program has been shortchanged in Amherst, forced to used spartan facilities more fit for a high school than a flagship state school competing in Division I. Even now, the track team trains in bitter cold at 7 a.m. on frozen ground because of lack of space and facilities.
All of that is about to change. New athletic director John McCutcheon is approaching the first anniversary of his hire, and things are starting to look up with more support across the board from the administration presided over by Chancellor John Lombardi.
"There's a big chance for all of us now at the University of Mass.," Lafreniere says. "We have new leadership with the new AD, John McCutcheon. And now we have a chancellor who's been here for a couple of years, and came over from Florida (where he was president,) so he understands what real athletics are.
"Changes are happening very, very quickly."
The track teams are having a multi-million dollar, nine-lane track installed. The facility will be able to host big events, which will be quite a change since UMass' track complex is so outdated right now that the Atlantic-10 will not allow the program to host competitions of any kind.
Also, the administration has given the track program a full allotment of scholarships, something that allowed Lafreniere to give Bakanowski a full ride.
