Morry Sanders may have been the only one who wasn’t surprised when Lexi Weeks recently made the United States Olympic Team.
Weeks, 19, the Cabot High graduate, went 15 feet, 5 inches during the U.S. Trials in Eugene, Ore., to qualify for the American team that will compete in Rio de Janeiro in mid-August.
She recently finished what may have been the best collegiate pole vault season for a female in history when she won the Southeastern Conference and NCAA Indoor and Outdoor championships as a freshman.
Sanders, who said she was the first female to ever win both indoor and outdoor NCAA championships in the same year, has coached Weeks and her twin sister Tori since they were 13 at his Arkansas Vault Club in Black Springs.
Lexi is Sanders’ and the club’s first Olympian.
“She was shocked. I think everybody was shocked. I wasn’t shocked,” Sanders said Monday. “I sent her a text the morning of the prelims and it simply said, ‘Do not go into that stadium as an underdog. Go out there and throw punches until you’re the last one standing.’”
She nearly did.
Weeks, considered a long shot going in, survived a 24-woman preliminary round to make it to the final 12. In the finals, she cleared 14-5 1-4, 14-9, 15-1 and 15-3 — each on her first try — to settle among the top three and become an Olympian.
She was the only finalist to clear the first four heights without a miss.
“When I saw Lexi take her first jump and clear it by a foot and a half, you could hear me and my wife giggling and snickering because we know when she has a jump that good, she’s going to have a good day,” Sanders said. “We hugged each other and said, ‘They’d better watch out for Lexi today.’”
Weeks missed on her first try at 15-5 but cleared it on her second attempt. Jenn Suhr, the 2012 Olympic champion, qualified first at 15-9. Sandi Morris, the Razorback alumna and 2015 NCAA Indoor champion who last week recorded the highest outdoor pole vault in the world (16-2), went 15-7 for the No. 2 slot.
Weeks didn’t attempt another height after 15-5.
“I knew that looking at the girls who were there, she was right in the mix,” Sanders said. “All it was going to take was for one of the girls to not have the day she wanted to have, and that’s what happened. One of the top three didn’t make it out of qualifying.”
Demi Payne, who had the third-best mark in the country this year (16 feet, 3-4 inch) did not advance to the finals.
Sanders has coached hundreds of vaulters since starting the vaulting club in 1999, and he said it had always been his dream for one of them to make an Olympic team.
“I don’t think Lexi will be the last, but she’s definitely the first,” he said. “(Watching the Trials) was so emotional. At 15-3 there were six girls left, and I slowly watched the X’s. When I saw the last one pop up on the screen, I grabbed my wife and hugged her and bawled like a baby.”
On Monday, he got choked up remembering the emotion.
“Even though I expected it and saw it coming, just the realization — oh my gosh, the odds weren’t in her favor. To be that young, on a stage that huge, and to go out and do what she did — it was possible but not probable. She did exactly what you thought she could do.
“We as coaches see little sparks in our kids, no matter what level they are. We know what they’re capable of, but to have a chance to see them live up to it, that’s what it’s all about. That’s why I get up in the morning.”
Sanders, one of the state’s top vaulters from the mid-1980s at Lake Hamilton and Arkansas State, had a personal best of 17-5. Besides the Weeks sisters, the vaulting club alumni list is an honor roll of the best in Arkansas:
* Andrew Irwin, the 2011 Mount Ida graduate who broke the indoor national record twice as a senior in high school and won two indoor NCAA titles and five SEC championships at Arkansas;
* Spencer McCorkel of Bryant, who cleared 17-9 and was the national leader indoors and outdoors as a senior;
Stephanie Foreman, the Lake Hamilton graduate who still holds Sun Belt Conference indoor and outdoor records competing for Arkansas State;
* Sam Ewing of Lake Hamilton, who set the 5A-7A state indoor mark of 17-1 before heading on to the UA;
* Nick Johnson of Lake Hamilton, ranked third nationally indoors and out this year at 17-6 1-2 who is headed to South Dakota to vault for Derek Miles, the three-time Olympian who coaches there.
* Tori Weeks, who set the national indoor record of 14-4 as a Cabot senior, earned All-American honors indoors as a freshman at Arkansas, finished third at the SEC indoor meet and runner-up to her sister outdoors.
Lexi Weeks set the outdoor national high school record at 14-7 1-2 last year.
Sanders said he also wasn’t surprised by her improvement to 15-5 since getting to Arkansas.
“Bryan Compton, who coaches the pole vaulters, does a phenomenal job as far as developing these athletes,” he said. “He gets these girls in who have some ability, but some who don’t know how to pole vault. He develops them and turns them into national champions.”
And, at least for Lexi Weeks, Olympian.
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