DeLand's Kylie Neira aims for pole vault title defense, state record: 'I want it all'

PORT ORANGE — Kylie Neira waited patiently under a tent for more than an hour. Ten pole vault competitors took their turns Wednesday at the District 3-4A track and field meet before Neira, the defending state champion from DeLand, put on her spikes, grabbed her pole and approached the runway.

She sprinted, planted the pole in the box and soared over the bar more than 11 feet off the ground. Neira calmly walked back to her tent, took a sip of water, clenched her fists and lightly pounded her legs before repeating the process to similarly successful results.

Yet at the conclusion of the competition, with the district title comfortably secured, Neira couldn't help but feel frustrated. Her best attempt on the day, 3.65 meters (11 feet, 9¾ inches), fell short of her expectations and her previous personal best.

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"It's not what I wanted to jump today," Neira said. "But there's not much you can do about it."

Goals were simple for Neira when she tried the sport as a freshman: PR, and have fun. Progress has always came before results, even last year when she became Volusia County's first FHSAA female pole vaulting champion since 1999.

"Let's put it this way," DeLand girls track and field coach Jim Lowenstein said. "When she won the state meet last year, when she was on the runway, she had already won the event … but I guarantee you that thought is nowhere in her head. The only thing she was thinking about was clearing the next height. She just wants to beat the bar."

But Neira's mentality has shifted as she starts her title defense. In the weeks ahead, she has sights set not only on repeating as champion, but also breaking the all-time state record of 4.04 meters (13 feet, 3 inches).

"I want it so bad. It's all I think about, honestly," Neira said. "I'll be sitting in class and be like, 'What am I going to do in practice? What am I going to change?' … I want to do this in college. I want to succeed. I want to break records.

"I want it all. I feel like every athlete would say the same thing."

Finding a new athletic passion

Before Neira blossomed into one of Florida's premier pole vaulters, she competed for four years in gymnastics, training to achieve Level 9 mastery in 2020 ― right before the COVID-19 pandemic forced facilities to shut down. Her love for gymnastics waned, partially from fear of the balance beam.

"It got scary. I was still young and didn't know how to deal with it," Neira said. "At that point, I just wanted to walk away and didn't want to do it. And then I went to this sport, where it's always scary."

Nicole Roberts-Neira, Kylie's mother and a former soccer player and track athlete at UMass and North Carolina, suggested her daughter join DeLand's cross country team upon enrolling in the fall of 2021. She cut nearly three minutes off her 5K time over the course of a season, but Neira decided distance running was not for her.

Instead, that spring, Lowenstein introduced Neira to pole vaulting and noted her gymnastics history would translate well.

"It's the awareness of their body position whether they're inverted or moving through the air … spinning and turning, knowing where their arms and legs are," Lowenstein said.

Neira debuted in the pole vault at the East Coast Classic on Feb. 25, 2022. She placed 11th that day, clearing the bar at 2.15 meters.

Five months later, she surpassed 3.35 meters at the AAU Junior Olympics.

Going the extra mile(s)

At the conclusion of her freshman year, Neira sought professional, specialized coaching. She joined Thin Air Vault Club and began working with Bill Cashman, who has trained more than 70 state champions in his track and field career.

And it didn't take long for Cashman to earmark Neira as a contender. He saw potential the first day she arrived.

"I don't want to toss out coaching clichés, but the bottom line is her willingness to be coached is the first thing that comes out. There are tons of talented athletes, but what makes her special is her huge work ethic," Cashman said. "I'll literally have to stand on the runway to force her to go home. Coaching her is an absolute blessing. I've had some great athletes over the years, and she is right at the top."

Neira makes a nearly 80-mile roundtrip drive to The Geneva School in Winter Park five days per week to train with Cashman, jumping two or three days with varying degrees of intensity.

The results speak for themselves.

Wednesday marked Neira's eighth competition of the spring, and her seventh victory. The outlier, at the FSU Relays in Tallahassee, included an unusual bit of misfortune in warmups — one of Neira's poles snapped clean in half.

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"That kind of threw me for a loop, but I had to move on," Neira said. "I remember coming off the pit, shrugging and saying, 'What do I do?' I was more mad than anything else, not knowing why that happened. I was talking to my coach with two poles in my hands."

A week later, in Gainesville, Neira produced her best jump to date — 3.97 meters (13 feet) — during the Florida Relays.

The 'rule of thirds'

Knowing Neira as well as he does, Cashman expects her to show up angry to Thursday's practice in pursuit of correcting mistakes. Handling disappointment and the inevitable plateaus, she admits, remains a struggle.

However, her mom offered a handy bit of advice from her prior experiences as a college and professional athlete, what she refers to as the "rule of thirds."

"One-third of the time, it's supposed to be really hard. One-third of the time, it's supposed to not feel good. And one-third of the time, it's supposed to be easy," Roberts-Neira said. "If we're all sitting in comfort, then something's wrong. You've got to level up and keep working at something."

In the case of Wednesday, Cashman believes the shortcomings stemmed from rushing in between attempts. She is routinely clearing state-record heights in practice settings, but anticipation of achieving an historic mark devolves into anxiety.

Even so, he has no doubt in his mind that Neira will not just break the current mark, but smash it.

"She's already where she needs to be to break the state record," Cashman said. "She just needs to relax and let it happen."

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: FHSAA track and field: Kylie Neira of DeLand eyes pole vault record