Sport connects Estonia to USD

Eerik Haamer grew up in Estonia and is known for talking in his sleep. Last summer his mother heard him chatting it up one night and noted that he was not speaking Estonian.

This was a first, as far as Haamer’s mother knew, and may go a ways in explaining her son’s level of immersion in life as a student-athlete – and All-American pole vaulter – at the University of South Dakota.

There’s a lot to cover in a conversation with Haamer, who grew up in Tartu, a city of about 100,000 located in southeastern Estonia. It starts with a great appetite for the limitless opportunities to develop, analyze and refine technique in a sport where the quest to connect athletic ability to solid mechanics never really ends.

“There are always technical nuances that can be improved,” Haamer said. “I had a psychology class where my assignment was to analyze my pole vault skills. I wrote about the 10,000 hours rule. When I tried to figure out how much time I’ve spent on the pole vault, I came up with 7,800 hours. That’s pretty close to a professional level but there is still a huge amount of work that could be done. That process is very appealing to me.”

Haamer jumped 18 feet, 4.5 inches, while taking fourth at the indoor NCAA Championships a year ago after setting Estonia’s under-20 record in the event with a vault of 17-8.5 the year before. He is a four-time 18-and-under national champion in Estonia.

When Chris Nilsen left the USD roster to begin winning Olympic medals, the Coyote program – as has been the case when other all-time greats moved on – did not see a significant drop off in this event at the college level. Haamer was the indoor Summit League runner-up and won the Summit League outdoor meet as a freshman. Next up for the sophomore is getting closer to 19 feet. As his coach can tell you, the higher you go, the tougher it becomes to make steady progress. Haamer, however, appears well suited to continue to climb.

“Eerik is a very smart kid, not just with school but with a lot of other things,” Derek Miles said. “He does his research and he analyzes things. Maybe sometimes too much so, but that’s how smart people do it… getting to 19 feet is going to test his patience, but he’s so invested in it. He works hard and he enjoys that process. That's going to help him as he goes higher.”

A lot of those estimated 7,800 hours spent vaulting took place in Estonia, where he quickly developed into his country’s best youth pole vaulter after first trying the sport as a 10-year-old in Tartu.

So where exactly is Tartu? To know that, first you have to find Estonia. Haamer can deliver the goods on that, of course. In perfect English he can tell you what you need to know about this small European country, located up near Norway, Sweden and Finland, without getting too bogged down in the details.

“We have a stereotype in Estonia that says that wherever in the world an Estonian would go, the first thing we’d want to talk about is that we invented Skype,” Haamer said. "Estonia is very technology driven. Our ID cards have chips on them where we can access our medical records. Overall, everything is pretty convenient.”

About 65 percent of the country is covered in forest. The population is a little over 1.3 million and Tartu is the second-biggest city. Estonians, not so surprisingly, speak Estonian. Not Finnish, or Russian or any other Scandanavian dialect, though parts of those cultures are evident in Estonian life. Haamer’s native tongue – and Coach Miles agrees with this – is not like any other language. 

“A lot of languages you’ll hear and be able to pick a few words here and there and have an idea of what they’re talking about,” Miles said. “That’s not true of Estonian. You don’t have any idea what they’re saying.”

Miles would know. In addition to being an Olympic medal-winner in the pole vault who has traveled all over the world, he now has three Estonians competing for the Coyotes. Marleen Mülla is a women’s pole vaulter in her first year on the squad and Ken-Mark Minkovski, a sprinter and jumper for the men’s team, is also an Estonian in his first season at USD.

It’s great that Haamer has friends around him from his homeland. With a shade over a million people, it’s odd that he’d be able to enjoy the company of fellow Estonians in South Dakota, but he’s also done his best to be an American college student-athlete. He has done this by reaching out to those around him.

“Where I come from people usually mind their own business,” Haamer said. “When I got to the States, everybody was so nice and talkative. That scared me a little bit at first. But I’ve gotten so much better at it since then. I’m way more open. I constantly challenge myself to get out of my comfort zone. I really enjoy the people, I enjoy that openness and the change of culture.” 

His association with USD began when Miles saw his name on a performance list of high school-aged athletes from around the world. Miles looked at some of his jumps on the internet and was intrigued by what he saw. He was not as tall as Nilsen, but he knew what he was doing.

“In some of the older videos it looks like he’s about 120 pounds – it was fun to watch him jump because he was just this little thing that would run down there, wind it up and get thrown,” Miles said. “Typically you don’t look for that in the pole vault. You look for the big, tall Chris Nilsen types. But I really liked how he ran and how he jumped. He was very accomplished for someone his age.”

Miles sent Haamer a message and asked if he was interested in coming to the United States for school. Haamer responded that, yes, he was interested and was already considering a few different U.S. colleges.

It ultimately established a conversation that ended with Haamer familiarizing himself with Miles’ record for taking on talented vaulters and making them better. That was a big selling point, as it has been for so many other nationally prominent vaulters who have decided to attend USD.

And, like it has for so many others, it is paying off. In Europe, athletes develop in club settings and not so much in academic settings. The whole idea of college sports is, well, foreign to much of the rest of the world. For people like Haamer, an excellent student with lofty goals in the pole vault, the decision to cross the Atlantic -- and then another half a continent -- was a wise one.

“I really appreciate the team mentality we have and also the fact that our team takes academics very seriously,” Haamer said. “I was also considering another school when I had to make a decision and for me it came down to Derek being very transparent about the entire U.S. sports system and the entire team’s commitment to succeeding. I'm very grateful I decided to come here."