Is Sydney Rick the unlikeliest college pole vault recruit ever?
Probably not, but she is one of the most inspirational.
After she graduates this spring, the Hopewell Valley Central High senior will head to Stockton University to vault and gain a degree. Those are two achievements well off the radar when Rick entered ninth grade.
“I didn’t expect to go to (public) high school, I didn’t expect to do any high school sport,” she said. “I never really thought about colleges. If I did, I thought I was gonna go with a family member, because they could tutor me outside the classroom. But now it’s fine. I don’t need any help.”
Indeed she doesn’t, and that’s a success story in itself as Rick has battled through dyslexia in order to earn the grades necessary for college. During that same time, she won an outdoor gold medal in pole vault at the Central Jersey Group III sectionals as a freshman, and an indoor gold in the CJ II sectionals this past winter.
“Sydney’s obviously a great athlete, but I’m really proud of what she’s accomplished in the classroom,” Bulldogs coach Aaron Oldfield said. “She’s just a great kid, and she’s overcome a ton.”
Rick’s early academic career was a struggle. She was in small classes getting one-on-one reading classes “but nothing was working. I shut down every time I went to school.”
In middle school she entered Lawrenceville’s Bridge Academy, which specializes in education for students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities. Rick pushed herself hard and by her junior year began taking a course at HVCHS. This year, she is a full-time student on Delaware Avenue.
“I still don’t think I’ve overcome (dyslexia). I have a lot of struggles that I’m working with,” Rick said. “But I think everything just clicked, I worked hard enough to push myself through everything. I was doing extra work outside the classroom, I was showing my teachers, ‘You can push me harder, I’m fine. Give me some more work.’”
She added with a laugh: “A lot of my teachers didn’t know what to do with me. When they gave me work, I would finish it before the duty and I’d say, ‘OK, can I have more?’ They were like, “Uh, what?’ They would have nothing for me. I would say, ‘Well make something for me please.’”
By her junior year, she told her parents she was ready for public school. But Kelly and Jeffrey Rick took a precautionary approach.
“My mom didn’t want to fully put me there without testing me out,” Sydney said. “I took an English class. We thought if I could get beyond English in a regular classroom without barely any help, I could do any other class. I finished with an A-plus, and it was like ‘Perfect, now I can go to senior year full time.”
While that was all transpiring, Rick was evolving as an athlete. She started as a gymnast at the urging of Kelly, a former gymnastics captain. Although not doing it competitively, Rick took individual and group classes. She didn’t love it, but it was setting her up for another sport.
“I did it just to do the tumbling for cheerleading because I was looking more into that going into high school,” she said. “I wanted to face the fear factor of doing things I don’t like. My mom thought that would be good. She said anything you can’t do is scary but you have to get over it and you’ll be fine, and the fear factor will go away some day.”
Although she attended Bridge, Rick was able to go out for cheerleading and made the Bulldogs team as a freshman. She has cheered for football all four years in the fall, but in the spring of her freshman year, another sport caught her eye. Not because it looked fun, but because it looked dangerous.
“My parents talked to Oldfield and asked what was going on with track, since no one in my family did it,” Rick recalled. “They didn’t know what I should go in. Oldfield said I should try pole vault.”
Thus, Jeffrey googled a pole vault video and the first one they looked at showed a girl breaking her pole and falling into the pit. Rather than turn and flee the idea, Sydney was seduced by it.
“I was like, ‘Oh, that looks like fun!’” she said.
Fun?
“I was looking for something that was scary to get over that fear factor again,” Rick said. “When my dad showed me that video I thought, ‘This could be enjoyable.” But I did hope (breaking a pole) wouldn’t happen to me.”
Little did Rick realize she already had a built-in aid for the pole vault.
“She was a former gymnast, and usually you’re looking for something like that in a pole vaulter,” Oldfield said. “They’re not afraid to be upside down and off the ground and all that crazy stuff that pole vaulters need to be successful.”
Rick also had the same desire in track she had in the classroom.
“She was eager, excited, and wanting to learn,” Oldfield said. “She came along nicely.”
It took a while, however, as Rick struggled the first few weeks.
“I didn’t get on the runway much,” she said. “I was mostly doing stuff on the side to learn how to work on the runway. One day at a Saturday practice I just picked it up. I remember thinking, ‘Oh My God this is so much fun.’” Coach Oldfield and coach (John) Otters helped us out.”
Just how did she adapt so quickly?
“I really don’t know,” Rick said. “It was a really nice day out, I had a really good breakfast, I was having fun with my friends and I was like ‘Oh, this actually is easy.’ It just clicked. It’s not as hard as everyone thinks it is. I do think gymnastics played a part in it.”
Sydney took third in the Colonial Valley Conference meet (there was no county meet that year due to Covid) with a vault of 6-feet, 6-inches. Then came the CJ III sectionals, where in the middle of her event, the rain suspended the competition until the next day. Rather than be thrown off her game, Rick came back to vault 7-feet, 6-inches to win the gold.
“That day was really interesting,” she said. “I got a PR by a foot. It was very exciting. I was shaking, that’s how nervous I was after everything. I’m thinking ‘Oh my God, I did this, that’s insane.’”
From there, Rick threw herself into it, going to a pole vault clinic in Columbus and working hard in her free time to improve. Oldfield was not surprised at how quickly she developed.
“She checked a lot of the boxes,” the coach said. “She was fast, she could accelerate down the runway, she had a strong upper body from gymnastics. She was determined, strong willed.”
Oldfield added that gymnastics helped in another way, in that it’s an individual event where all eyes are on the athlete and not a team. That helped transfer to track, where the competitor stands alone amidst the gaze of the crowd.
“She had that individual mindset engrained in her,” Oldfield said.
Starting with her sophomore year, however, “I was going through a block until last spring. I just couldn’t get over eight feet all winter. It frustrated me.”
Rick struggled in the winter of her sophomore year, but in the spring she won the Hopewell Valley Sophomore/Freshman meet with a mark of 7-0 and took third in the county meet with a then-PR of 8-0. She slid to 7-6 in sectionals and missed advancing to states by one spot.
In the winter of her junior year, Rick took second in the county meet and fifth in CJ II, but still could not surpass 7-6.
Suddenly, when spring arrived, “the block started to break down,” Rick said.
After a disappointing 7-0 in the county meet, Sydney ascended to 9-0 two straight May weekends to take second in the Mercer Coaches Classic and the MCT. That was followed by a PR of 9-6 in the CJ III meet, good for second place. She slipped to 9-0 in states, but the block truly had lifted and her confidence carried into the winter season.
After hitting an indoor PR of 9-0 four straight times (taking second in counties along the way), Rick exploded for a 10-0 vault to win CJ II. She could not advance to Meet of Champions, however, which is the goal this spring.
“Our school record is 11-1,” Oldfield said. “On any given day she can do that.”
Although pole vault is her main event, Rick helps out wherever needed and has done the shot, javelin, long jump, triple jump, 55 meters, 200 meters and 4×100 relay. Her dedication is endless and Oldfield said “You literally have to kick her out of the weight room. I start hurting watching what she does in there.”
The coach added that Rick constantly helps behind the scenes, answering questions from teammates, cleaning up, putting equipment back in its right place. Sydney feels being at HVCHS fulltime has made a big difference, in that she is able to talk to younger teammates during the day to answer any questions they have.
“When I was going to the Bridge Academy I always felt like I was not connected with the kids in track, even though I knew them,” she said. “I never saw them in the hallway. I’d never eat lunch with them. When I started going to Hopewell, I started to talk to them, it was more of a social network thing. My senior year has definitely been better. Being here has made me more aware of people who are doing track.”
It has also given her a closer connection with her coach.
“Our communication is a lot better,” Oldfield said. “She’s just grown academically so much — even more than as an athlete — from her freshman year to senior year. I’m not her teacher and what she’s done in the classroom I’ve seen from afar, but from what I see in our communication she is a totally different person.”
Rick actually feels that athletics and academics interlock in a positive way.
“I feel they correlate with one another,” she said. “If I’m doing better in track my academics will be better and If I’m doing well academically it shows in sports. They go hand in hand.”
They will soon go hand-in-hand off to college, as Rick’s inspirational story begins its next exciting chapter.
Hopewell Valley pole vaulter Sydney Rick. (Photo by Aaron Oldfield.),
