Yesterday, Pawlik. Today Babits — as in Paul Babits, the new M45 indoor pole vault record holder. His hometown paper ran a nice feature on him today. Great quote in the article: “Once you get to 35 or 40 years old and you’re no longer jumping in the 18-foot range, and you’re starting to jump 16, 17 feet, the coaches start to look at you and wonder when you’re going to grow up.”

Here’s the piece (in case the link above goes dead):
Passion for pole-vaultingIndoor facility fulfills dreamBy Phil BloomThe Journal GazetteAge has never been an obstacle as far as Paul Babits is concerned.
Height is the only obstacle that matters.
Babits is a pole-vaulter; has been since he was a kid in Michigan and began jumping over fences with the aid of a bamboo pole.
“It’s a passion of mine,” he said.
That passion has not waned even as Babits reaches his mid-40s. He’s still jumping with athletes half his age, as he did last weekend at the Meyo Invitational at Notre Dame.
Despite his age, Babits has remained a regular participant – and high finisher – at collegiate meets, including a first-place finish at Butler’s Indy Relay in 2003.
When it comes to vaulters his own age, Babits is one of the best. On Jan. 28, he set a world indoor record at 15 feet, 3 inches in winning the 45 to 49 masters division at the Reno Summit in Reno, Nev.
“I’ve been chasing this one for a while,” Babits said of the record.
He spent four years pursuing the 40 to 44 age group mark of 17-0 set by former U.S. Olympian Earl Bell, and won the USA Track and Field masters indoor title in that age group in 2003.
“I was just missing it, so I knew I just needed to maintain and hit 45,” he said. “This record was a little more approachable.”
Babits moved up an age class when he celebrated his 45th birthday on Christmas Eve.
“I got it one month in, and I can keep breaking it for the next four years,” he said.
Babits, a former state high school champion in Michigan, bounced around at the collegiate level. He began at Morehead State, but when it dropped its track program, he transferred to Murray State and won the Ohio Valley Conference pole vault title in 1982. He transferred again to San Jose State and graduated in 1984.
He twice qualified for the U.S. Olympic trials and was rated among the top 10 vaulters in United States.
It was easy back then to find an open door just about anywhere.
“I’d walk into a college facility, and coaches were pretty receptive,” Babits said. “They’d say, ‘Boy, great, can you help our kids?’
“But once you get to 35 or 40 years old and you’re no longer jumping in the 18-foot range, and you’re starting to jump 16, 17 feet, the coaches start to look at you and wonder when you’re going to grow up.”
Babits said he always had a job and for 10 years ran his own computer company. A little over four years ago, he was offered a job to manage a group of cemeteries in Indiana. It meant moving to Fort Wayne, and Babits immediately knew what he was getting into.
“Gary Hunter, Brian Kimball, Bobby Shank,” he said, rattling off a list of vaulters with Fort Wayne ties that he competed against over the years. “It’s not like I’m unfamiliar with people in Fort Wayne.”
Or with its pole vaulting legacy.
“Gary, Brian and Bobby, they are the reason Fort Wayne has been doing so well for such a long time,” he said. “Bob McClintock has done a great job, and the Gensics and so on. It’s amazing. I don’t know of any other place, and I’ve been everywhere, where the history of pole vaulting is as strong as it is in Fort Wayne. It’s just fantastic.”
So, after moving from Ann Arbor, Mich., to Fort Wayne, Babits fulfilled another dream by building an indoor facility where he can work out year-round. The 6,400-square-foot pole barn has a 35-foot ceiling, two pole vault pits, a high jump pit, and “hundreds of poles.”
He’s calling the place Vault High Athletics and is offering regular one-day clinics and open meets to young vaulters because he knows how difficult it can be to find a training facility.
“Fort Wayne just didn’t have anything like it,” he said. “That was a difficult thing for me. I went from Huntington College to Eastern Michigan for three years, 300 miles round trip.
“I was traveling a lot to train and stay in shape. I kept talking about a building and saving and saving. I don’t think anyone thought we’d do it. It put a huge smile on my face the first time I jumped in my own facility in my backyard. Now that we’ve got a building with pole vault pits, we’ve got kids training there who are probably going to be Olympians some day.”