K'don happy Boland broke his record

André Lowe, Senior Staff Reporter

It has been a week and a half since Kingston College (KC) pole-vault athlete Xavier Boland broke the boys' record in the Open event on the Thursday night inside the National Stadium, at the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) Boys and Girls' Athletics Championships.

It may appear strange, but K'Don Samuels, the former record-holder, appeared a relieved man.

For Samuels, who vaulted a meet-best 4.45 metres in 2009 while competing for rival school Jamaica College (JC), Boland's 4.46m improvement is an indication of advancement at the local high school level.

Boland has made several good vaults this season, and it was little surprise that he proved too good for Calabar's Kazuma Davis, 4.20m, and JC's Hugh Lewis, 4.00m.

"It makes me feel good because in order for the standard of the event to be lifted, other people have to rise up and do better than I did," Samuels said, minutes after Boland's record-breaking vault.

"The other competitors are a little too coward. Boland has passed the fear of the event already and that helped him to do better than his competitors here. Everyone has the potential to do well, but people are just afraid of the height. However, this event is more mental than physical," added Samuels.

Pleased with performance

Boland himself was quite pleased with the performance, even if it was a little way off his season's best of 4.50m, set a few weeks ago at the UWI Invitational.

"I didn't do my best, but I couldn't ask for more than the gold medal and the record," Boland said. "At first things started off shady, but overall I think it was a good performance. The coaches helped me a lot, there was a lot of communication and in the end in terms of my technique, I had to make some corrections but I'm happy with the end result.

"I was hoping to go at least 4.50m because that was my personal best from the UWI track meet, so I guess I have stepped down a bit. However, I won, broke the record and got some good points for my team, so I'm satisfied," Boland continued.

The 17-year-old, who shared that he only started doing pole vault by chance, has already turned his attention to the CARIFTA Games later this month and is also keeping one eye focused on the Penn Relays record.

"I was at training idling, doing some pull-ups and instead of doing the pull-ups I decided to swing my foot up and kick the roof, and one of the coaches saw me and said I should try the pole vault.

"At first I was terrible, perhaps the 10th-best person, but I decided to work hard on it and said to myself that if I was going to do one event for KC I'll do it to the best of my ability," Boland shared.