THOUGH SHE ENDED the season with the nation’s leading high school girls pole vault mark for ’25, Jaicee Jasmer admits that her year was far from perfect. The Sulphur Springs, Texas, native jumped 14-6¼ (4.43) outdoors on February 27, which moved her to =No. 9 on the all-time prep list. As the season wore on, however, she would face challenges both mental and physical.
She took 2nd at the Nike Indoor meet two weeks after her breakthrough jump (clearing 14-0/4.27), but then a series of subpar meets followed. For a time she was unable to get back over 14 feet. “It was all mental. It was the pressure I was putting on myself,” says Jasmer, who was coached in high school by Tory Cunningham of Texas Vault Academy and is now settling in as a collegiate frosh at Louisville. “It was all from me, it wasn’t from anyone else. It was just like, ‘You have to hold this spot’ and ‘You have to jump higher,’ all of that stuff. And I kinda forgot to have fun.”
She finally got her groove back in time for championship season. “I prayed about it a lot and just finally hit my little breaking point after jumping 13 for the fourth meet in a row,” she says. “I made sure that I wasn’t so focused on my marks on the next meet and more on completing the little things that we had been working on and having fun.”
She defended her Texas 4A title in early May, clearing a meet record 14-4 (4.37). “I’m really proud of the way that I came back and stayed positive,” says Jasmer. “I went from that slump and then broke the state record and that felt really great.”
Unfortunately, another setback curbed her momentum again. An injury that led to sciatica plagued her when she arrived in Oregon in June for the Nike Outdoor/USATF U20 Championships double. She placed 4th in both meets and failed to clear 14-feet.
“Having to jump on that wasn’t the best,” she says. “But we got that cleared up pretty quickly after Oregon.”
She arrived at Louisville and quickly found herself in the care of two of the best pole vaulters in the world. When Cardinals vault coach Brooke Rasnick went on maternity leave in early October, she handed the reins over to two professional athletes she was coaching, Sandi Morris and Gabriela Leon. Morris had just returned from a silver medal at the World Championships in Tokyo, capping a resurgent season for the ’16 Olympic silver medalist, while Leon, a mainstay on the DL circuit, was an NCAA champion for Louisville in ’22.
“She’s such a fun person to be around,” Jasmer says of Morris, who began working with Rasnick, Leon and the Louisville vaulters in January. “She’s so knowledgeable and every day was a learning opportunity.”
When Rasnick returned to campus in mid-November she could tell that Jasmer was already adapting to the training regimen — and enthusiastic about the technique changes Rasnick was implementing.
“Jaicee’s pretty raw as an athlete and as a pole vaulter and she’s very talented,” says the coach. “She’s really fast, she moves well on the runway, she’s very dynamic. We have a lot of things that we’re trying to change technically. We’re going to try to put that work in now while she’s young and understand that’s going to take time to sort through and get dialed in and just be patient with those changes.”
In addition to improving Jasmer’s running mechanics, Rasnick is working to overhaul her takeoff. “She wasn’t one who would jump off the ground very much, she would just cram into the pole,” Rasnick says. “She had a lot of skill to get out of that position, but you’re typically less consistent with that. I think it’s easier to keep healthy if she’s able to set the takeoff up a little bit better and just get more out of her jump, efficiency-wise.”
Jasmer, a former gymnast who was also a cheerleader and sprinter in high school, is pleased with the progress she’s already making as a collegian. She credits Morris and Leon for helping her appreciate the importance of proper fueling and rest. “I think the biggest adjustment was realizing that off days are OK and I have to actually listen to my body,” she says. “Rest days are very important and I didn’t realize the full extent of that until getting here and realizing that I didn’t have to push so hard every single day.”
Given all the changes, both Rasnick and Jasmer are keeping expectations in check for the winter, though they believe she could very well qualify for the NCAA Indoor. “We try to stay away from goals involving numbers and just be consistent with the changes that we’re making to my jump,” Jasmer says.
The outdoor season, including NCAAs and USATF U20s — with a shot at qualifying for World U20s — will be the focus, along with a plan for long-term success. “We both think that those changes are worthwhile to do right now, instead of just, hey, run fast, hit it hard and we’ll see what happens,” says Rasnick. “We’re looking more long term than short term and I think she can have a really great career ahead of her in college, and past that if that’s what she chooses to do.”
