Pelkofer the Pioneer for Pole Vault U.

Before there was Chris Nilsen, Sam Pribyl or Bethany Buell, there was Sandy Pelkofer, a 5-foot-3-inch former gymnast from Rapid City Stevens High School. Pelkofer was South Dakota high school’s first state pole vault champion, the Coyotes’ first national champion in the event, and on Friday night she will officially become a member of USD’s prestigious Henry Heider Coyote Sports Hall of Fame.

“I was a gymnast and didn’t know the track coach at Rapid City Stevens, but he must’ve learned who I was,” said Pelkofer. “He taught American History, which is a course that juniors take. I went to sign up for his class and he jokingly said ‘I’ll let you take my class if you come pole vault for me next year.’

“It was a whole different ball game because everybody was new. I had a good coach. He knew how to teach it and we started slow, but I wasn’t any better right away than my teammates. The three of us from Rapid City Stevens managed to jump the same height at the first track meet and I had the least amount of attempts so I got to be the first state champion.”

So that was step one – the state sanctioned the sport, the history teacher recruits Pelkofer to try it and she accepts. But getting to USD took another strong recruiting effort, this one from Lucky Huber, who was either unaware or undeterred that Pelkofer had already made her mind up that she was going to attend the University of Mary in North Dakota.

“I had even signed with them,” said Pelkofer. “But Lucky kind of threw Derek (Miles) at me and said ‘if you come here, this is who your coach is going to be.’ And I changed my mind at the last minute in the spring.”

Miles had graduated from USD a few years prior in 1996, but Huber had hired him to work in the advising center while aiding the track program. Good decision.

Pelkofer’s first year of track and field at USD was what you might expect for someone who had just found the sport at the age of 16 – it was hard.

“I was the only one on the team that wasn’t a track and field athlete,” said Pelkofer. “I didn’t do any other events. Practices were really hard. I was slower and I had never been in a weight room.”

A few years later, Pelkofer was quoted in the Sioux City Journal after establishing the only record in event’s college division that year. She said good pole vaulters, both men and women, are tall and fast and I’m short and slow.

So how did she do it??

“I was a little bit better at the technical side and I just worked harder,” said Pelkofer. “That freshman year turned out to be the best thing that happened to me because it made me work harder than everybody else.”

It just so happens that during the summer following Pelkofer’s freshman year that Miles started training with three-time Olympian Earl Bell who established Bell Athletics just outside of Jonesboro, Arkansas. He brought back to campus more “technical tricks” for his athletes, and Pelkofer blossomed. She earned the first of her five All-America honors with a sixth-place finish indoors and backed that up with a fifth-place finish outdoors. Then came her junior year.

“I had a personal record by almost a foot my sophomore year,” said Pelkofer. “It was a huge jump. I got a little more confidence and I wasn’t scared at nationals anymore. It was easy. It was fun. And then my junior year is when everything clicked.”

Pelkofer won a jump-off against defending national champion Jennifer Swanson at the 2001 national indoor championship meet held in Boston, Massachusetts. She didn’t expect to win it, but she did.

“I was better that year, but I didn’t think winning would be an option,” said Pelkofer. “I don’t remember anything. I got in the zone and was just thinking about making the next height. I jumped first in the jump off and even after I had cleared the bar, I thought she would make it. She had already won once or twice before.

“I do recall going over to Derek after my make to check in on what we wanted to do next time, but he just told me to wait. He said he just kind of wanted to watch this last jump, so maybe he knew something I didn’t.”

A little more than an hour later, Sara Deckert won a national title in the 400-meter dash. Between Pelkofer, Deckert, Tonya Kneifl and Molly Wedel, the Coyotes totaled 30 points, good for seventh place in the team standings.

Pelkofer backed up her achievement by reaching a jump-off again her senior year at indoor nationals and bringing back silver. She totaled five top-six finishes in all between her sophomore and senior seasons and qualified for seven championships.

Pelkofer currently lives in Minnesota where she works as an anti-money laundering compliance officer at U.S. Bank. She graduated from USD with a psychology degree and went on to earn her master’s in school counseling. She is the 2002 USD women’s scholar-athlete of the year.

Asked about the ongoing success of the pole vault program at USD, Pelkofer said it hasn’t surprised her in the slightest.

“With Sam and I, and with Derek being there coaching, it was only a matter of time before those things started to happen. I didn’t have any worries about achieving national success following the switch to Division I and being able to recruit further. There are marks from my time in many events that have held up and I knew it would be an easy transition for that team.”