Story Date: Friday, June 13, 2008

Pickens eyeing spot on U.S. Olympic team

By Ben Gouldsmith
Sun staff writer

JONESBORO — The last time Andree Pickens was preparing for the Olympic trials was in 1996. At that time she was a 16-year-old gymnast with hopes of competing at the Olympic Games in Atlanta.
Now, 12 years later, Pickens is an Olympic hopeful once again. Only this time, she’s a POLE VAULTer hoping to earn a spot on the United States team that travels to Beijing, China, in August.
“This was a new challenge for me,” Pickens said of POLE VAULTing. “With gymnastics, I had achieved so much already.”
Though Pickens failed to qualify for the 1996 Olympics in which the United States won the team gold medal, she went on to have a decorated collegiate career at Alabama. She won individual NCAA titles on the uneven bars and the balance beam, and led the Crimson Tide to the 2002 national championship.
Pickens was the 2002 Southeastern Conference Female Athlete of the Year, a 3-time SEC Gymnast of the Year and earned 14 All-America awards during her time at Alabama.
“It was my life,” Pickens said of gymnastics, a sport in which she competed since age 6.
Yet after her four years of college eligibility expired in gymnastics, Pickens joined the Crimson Tide track and field squad as a POLE VAULTer for one season.
Following a 1-year stint as an assistant gymnastics coach at Southeast Missouri State in 2005, Pickens moved to Jonesboro to pursue her dream of qualifying for the 2008 Olympic Games as a POLE VAULTer.
Since moving to Jonesboro, Pickens has trained with Earl Bell, a 3-time Olympian, 5-time NCAA champion and former world record-holder. She trains alongside other Olympic POLE VAULT hopefuls such as Jillian Schwartz, Jeff Hartwig, Jeremy Scott, Randalene Sergent and Daniel Ryland.
“Her work ethic is really, really good,” said Schwartz, who qualified for the 2004 Olympics in Athens Greece. “I think that comes from gymnastics, where you just work and work and work. The competitiveness and drive to get better is pretty much the same across all sports at that level.”
The U.S. Olympic Team Trials for track and field start June 27 in Eugene, Ore., but the women’s POLE VAULT final isn’t until July 6. That’s when three jumps will make or break a POLE VAULTer’s Olympic dreams.
Pickens, of course, has experience competing in that pressure-packed atmosphere, albeit in a different sport. She remembers the gymnastics trials in Boston. She remembers placing 12th in the all-around. And she remembers the feeling of competing against the best in the country.
“It was just one of those days where you had to be perfect to make the team,” Pickens said.
She expects a similar test this time around, when only the top three from the trials qualify to compete in Beijing. But unlike 12 years ago, when a panel of judges decided Pickens’ fate, the only thing that matters now is how far she flings herself over a horizontal bar with a fiberglass pole.

bgouldsmith@jonesborosun.com

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A special thank you to Mr. & Mrs. Dillion for joining in and supporting the dream. I know that my passion for the pole vault and my will to succeed has touched your hearts and this will be an exciting journey together. Thank you for believing in me.

Isreal Dillion Jr. & Catherine J Dillion
State Farm Insurance Agents Jonesboro, AR
~ Silver Medalist Sponsor ~

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A special thank you to Mr. & Mrs. Rowles for joining in and supporting the dream. I know that my passion for the pole vault and my will to succeed has touched your hearts and this will be an exciting journey together. Thank you for believing in me.

Fred & Grace Rowles
~ Silver Medalist Sponsor ~

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Service is the price we pay for the privilege of living on this earth.

~ Shirley Chisholm

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A special thank you to Continental Utility Solutions, Inc. for joining in and supporting the dream. I know that my passion for the pole vault and my will to succeed has touched your hearts and this will be an exciting journey together. Thank you for believing in me.

Continental Utility Solutions
~ Corporate Silver Medalist Sponsor ~

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One day at a time

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2008 DRAKE RELAYS RELEASE #16

DES MOINES, IOWA — April Steiner, who has vaulted a 2008 world best 15 feet 2.25 inches, heads the list of athletes scheduled to compete in the women’s pole vault during the Saturday, April 26 session of the 99th annual Drake Relays.

Steiner, who captured a silver medal in the 2007 Pan American Games, set her world leading mark last Saturday to win the Jacobs Invitational in Norman, Okla.

The field also includes 2004 Olympian Jillian Schwartz; Andree’ Pickens, who was ranked No. 10 in the U.S. last year; and former NCAA champion Kate Conwell.

Steiner ranked No. 4 in the U.S. last year, placed fifth at the 2008 U.S. Indoor Championships and the 2004 U.S. Olympic Trials.

Steiner became the first woman in the Southeastern Conference to clear 13 feet indoors in 2001, while competing for Arkansas.

Schwartz, who won the Drake Relays invitational pole vault in 2002 and 2005, is a three-time runner-up in the U.S. Outdoor Championships (2002, 2004, 2006).

She also was second at the recent U.S. Indoor Championships and competed in the 2008 World Indoor Championships.

After placing second at the 2004 U.S. Indoor Championships, she had a career best of 15-1 at the 2004 World Indoor Championships to place fourth while becoming the fifth American ever to clear 15 feet. Schwartz was third at the 2007 Drake Relays.

Pickens, who was second at the 2007 Drake Relays, already has won four meets this year: Saluki Invitational, Indiana Relays, Arkansas State Classic and Alabama Relays.

She owns a pers Pickens was sixth at the 2007 U.S. Indoor Championships and ninth at the 2007 U.S. Outdoor Championships.

Conwell owns a personal best of 14-3.5 set in 2005 while competing for Washington. She won the 2005 NCAA outdoor pole vault title.

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Nettleton Intermediate Center
Jonesboro, AR
April 16, 2008

Rally for Excellence
Bench Mark Testing

Desire to Achieve

you can…do anything
you can…be anything
just believe…to achieve it!

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On April 28, 1931, women’s track and field events were approved for the Olympics.

It was not until the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games that women’s pole vault was allowed as an exhibition event. The 2000 Sydney Olympic Games hosted the first Olympic women’s pole vault event.

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