Issue date: 3/18/10 Section: Sports

Even as she sat and stretched in Pershing Arena, senior pole vaulter Katrina Biermann wore a big smile as she thanked coaches and staff that congratulated her on her new title of national champion.

Biermann became the fifth Truman women's track and field athlete to win a national championship Friday night in the pole vault.

"It was the most intense competition I've ever been in for any event in my entire eight years of track and field," Biermann said.

Biermann had national qualifying marks in both the pole vault and triple jump. At the NCAA Div. II Championship in Albuquerque, N.M., Biermann faced last year's champion Lauren Stelten from Minnesota State University-Mankato, Jennifer Hansen from Slippery Rock University (Pa.), and Jessica Blair of Abilene Christian University (Texas).

"Pole vault was a really tough competition," head coach John Cochrane said. "It went back and fourth and there were probably four people that could have won."

For Biermann it came down to the final vault.

"I knew if [Stelten] made the bar, I'd get second, but if she didn't, I'd get first," Biermann said. "So, I missed my first three, she missed her first two, so I was sitting back. It was so intense. I was just sitting there kind of hoping she wouldn't make it, still hoping she would do well. … I just kind of lay down and closed my eyes and closed my ears and just let whatever happen, happen. When I opened my eyes the crossbar had fallen."

Biermann said her nervousness and excitement hit her in her first vault of the meet, but she calmed down and relaxed after her first vault and treated nationals like any other meet.

"I wasn't nervous warming up," Biermann said. "I was pretty focused, but that first vault, my nerves hit me. My first vault wasn't the prettiest, but yeah, it was nerves. I had never started that high before. … But once I made that first bar, it was just kind of a relief."

As the competition was trimmed down, the heights and pressure increased. Biermann used all three attempts at 12-10.00 feet to stay in the competition.

"That was probably the most important vault of the meet, because it was the difference between sixth or seventh place or fourth or fifth," Biermann said. "I had to refocus all that nervous energy and just do it."

Assistant coach Tim Schwegler said this competition emotionally drained him as a coach.

"Friends of mine kept telling me, 'She's got a shot,'" Schwegler said. "I was going to be happy if she was top three. That one height where she had two misses, I'm sitting there going, 'Well, the worst she could do is fifth … but this would be her best national finish ever.' But she made it, and [her next jump] moved her from fifth to first … I try not to think about these things."

Continued...

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