How Mount St. Joseph’s Veronica Vacca leaped into the national pole vault rankings

Veronica Vacca took a deep breath as she tried to tune out the crowd and noises around her. She’s used to cheering fans in an arena filled with elite athletes.

The atmosphere fuels her, but it was time to lock in. It was her third and final attempt in the pole vault at the indoor state championships last month at Penn State.

As she hoisted the pole above her shoulder and prepared to dash down the runway, Vacca, a junior at Mount St. Joseph Academy, thought, “If I don’t make this, I’m going to be so mad at myself.”

She was attempting to clear 14 feet, 3 inches, which would set personal and state indoor records.

“Then I cleared it,” Vacca said with a smile. “I was just laying on the pit with my hands over my mouth like ‘Oh my gosh,’ and I remember looking up, and I saw the crossbar shaking on the stand — it stayed on and I cleared it, which was amazing.”

Her jump also moved her up in the rankings to the second-best high school pole vaulter in the country. However, this wasn’t her first milestone in the sport. Over five years, Vacca has built quite the resumé to draw national attention.

She’s a two-time Penn Relays champion, and, after clearing a meet-record 13-11¼ at the indoor New Balance Nationals in Boston, she became a five-time national champion.

Since middle school, Vacca could jump higher than the average person in her age bracket, and now her results are mirroring those at the college level. Becoming an Olympian is the goal, said Vacca, who has numerous college coaches reaching out to her but did not disclose which programs. Her focus, though, is on staying present.

She knows the time, commitment, and effort it takes to see results in this sport. It was her determination from a young age that has allowed her to blossom into a highly touted pole vaulter.

“I’m very passionate about every sport I’ve ever played,” Vacca said. “I’m a very competitive person, and I wanted to be the best.

“It’s hard when you first start. You have to understand that your jump isn’t going to look like someone who’s been doing it for years. You have to phase into it. There’s pieces of the puzzle that you have to connect, and you have to work for it. I was very willing to work for it.”

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Vacca tried pole vault for the first time in the sixth grade. Her older sister Skylar, then a freshman at Mount St. Joseph, was approached by the track and field coach about trying pole vault and taking lessons at Philadelphia Jumps Club in West Norriton.

Skylar wasn’t interested, but Veronica found the sport intriguing and asked to give it a try.

“We were both ex-gymnasts,” said Vacca, who competed in gymnastics until fifth grade. “[Skylar] did diving; diving and pole vaulting are two big sports [former] gymnasts go into. But my favorite event was vault [in gymnastics] — you’re running full-speed at this block, and you’re not afraid that you’re going to get hurt.

“It felt super familiar. It’s the same feeling to me, and that’s what I loved about pole vaulting so much.”

There were nerves, of course, the first day Vacca walked into Philadelphia Jumps Club, one of the top pole vaulting training facilities in the country. But it didn’t stem from trying a new sport.

Her coach, Brian Mondschein, who competed in pole vault at Virginia Tech and is cofounder of PJC, called Vacca a “bull in a china shop.” He said she was fearless but had little to no technique, which was expected. The potential, however, was there.

After a couple of tryout sessions, Mondschein told Vacca’s mother, Ginger, that Veronica was talented but it would be up to her to put the time in.

“I didn’t know anything about pole vault at the time,” Ginger Vacca said. “But I said to [the coaches], ‘Do you think she might have any talent here?’ They were like, ‘Absolutely — she’s definitely a strong kid who’s not afraid of the pole.’ Nobody can make any promises, but she really loved it.”

Vacca started to lean on the mentorship of other club members, like Chloe Timberg of Doylestown, who attended Central Bucks West and is now a sophomore at Rutgers. Vacca broke Timberg’s state indoor record this year, clearing 14 feet to shatter Timberg’s mark of 13-10 that she set in 2021.

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“She’s always been — in a really good way — one of the most competitive kids I know,” Mondschein said of Vacca. “She loves being around people that are better than her, and she learns from them. She comes in with a chip on her shoulder that she can hang with anybody.”

Her commitment level changed during the COVID-19 shutdown. While Vacca was adapting to online school as a seventh-grader, she was starting to crawl the walls in the house, her mother said, which is why she called Mondschein to see if she could train outdoors with him.

“I had a couple of older athletes that would meet with me at a local track,” Mondschein said. “There’s a lot that goes into pole vaulting other than the act. It’s about getting faster, getting stronger in the right ways.

“I invited this little seventh-grader in this group of high schoolers and older kids. She just came and put in so much work.”

Vacca improved about two feet in a couple of months of training. That same year, she set a national age-group record at 13 years old when she cleared 12-6.

For reference, Mondschein said he didn’t clear 12 feet until he was a sophomore in high school.

“That really fueled her to keep working,” he said. “Even when things got back to a more normal schedule for everybody, she kept coming out and training with our high school group.”

Vacca now trains six days a week for about three to four hours a day. Saturday is her one day off when she’ll shut off the alarm and soak up the extra rest.

And besides her training, Vacca has a rigorous academic load that consists of honors and advanced placement courses. So how does she manage it all?

She kept that answer simple: “I’m on it.”

“I usually get everything done when I need it done,” Vacca said. “If I wasn’t so in love with this sport, I don’t think I would be putting this much energy into it. It’s also become a way for me to get rid of frustration after a long day of school.”

Vacca’s father, Peter, said: “She’s got her academic stress load, pole vaulting, and she’s got a lot of college coaches reaching out. You can see there’s a lot of stress on a girl who just turned 17, but she’s handled it well.”

“It’s her personality,” Ginger added. “She’s OK with her focus, and she’s so fired up about it.”

There will always be challenges. Vacca has learned to deal with minor injuries that come from the wear and tear of competing and training. But the biggest hurdle in this sport, she said, is the mental aspect.

So her coach has found ways to take that pressure away and keep it fun.

“A lot of our poles are blue and green — that works as the colors of our club,” Mondschein said. “The particular set of poles she’s jumped with now I hadn’t wrapped in our color yet. She’s like, ‘I want all my poles to be pink.’ I kind of cringed at the idea, but I said, ‘All right, if you set the state record, we’ll talk about your poles being pink.’ ”

The first thing Vacca said to her coach when she set the state record: “I get my pink poles now.”

“It’s the little ways to pick them up when their energy is not what it needs to be,” Mondschein said.

With another year of high school ahead, Vacca said, the goal is to keep jumping higher. She hopes to find a college program that will fit her academically and athletically, and if the cards fall right, one day she’ll have a chance to compete in the Olympics.

The 17-year-old already has made history, setting a standard that other girls in the sport will be looking to top.

“Wow, that’s amazing — I never really thought about it like that,” Vacca said. “I always thought about beating the record, not setting a new one that others will have to beat. That makes me feel like a superhero.”