Peters take the pole: Pole vaulting coach Eric Peters and his son Kyle Peters get to share their first and last season on the pole vaulting team together

“I think I want to quit baseball to go out for track.”

First year pole vaulting coach Eric Peters’ head started spinning. He had always let his son, senior Kyle Peters, play whatever sports he wanted. Although Eric taught him how to pole vault when he was six in the front yard, deep down he would have loved to see him pursue it, but it was usually baseball that had him hooked. Now, he would get to spend Kyles last year at home on the track.

Though Eric has been offered the coaching job at East multiple times, it was Kyle’s request that prompted his dad to finally accept the position. He came to coach at East this year, for Kyle.

“That was something that I’d been waiting 18 years for him to ask me,” Eric said.

After considering the amount of time he would be playing baseball, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to participate in a spring sport. But when he found out his dad was going to be supporting from the sidelines, he chose track to keep learning — this time with his dad as an official coach.

Eric pole vaulted in high school, landing a 3A state champion in 1993. At Bethel College, he was a three-time All American — later inducted into the school’s athletic Hall of Fame. In 2004, the year before Kyle was born, he began coaching pole vaulting at Shawnee Mission Northwest. 

But it took 18 years and one sport for Kyle to finally land on Eric’s life passion. Kyle didn’t expect much playing time on the baseball field, and joining pole vault would make his dad happy.

“I didn’t really want to play baseball in college,” Kyle said. “After [club] season, I was just kind of done with it and I want to try something new. It was always either going to be track or nothing at all. When my dad got the opportunity to coach, that solidified my decision.”

Since he chose pole vaulting in December, Kyle has practiced a couple times a week at Olympus — an indoor pole vaulting gym — with his dad before the season began. They worked on the basic’s — two, four and six step up drills, along with some bending drills to get back into the sport.

Even though Kyle has been coached by a competitive pole vaulter all his life, from tagging along in his dads high school practices when he was young and practicing drills in the front yard, he’s never wanted to have a competitive edge in the sport.

“I don’t think I have any pressure [to be great at it] because it’s my first year doing it competitively,” Kyle said. “I’m not like competing against the top people in the district or in the state. There is a little bit of pressure to perform in meets because I want to do well for my team, but I think it’s more fun than anything.”

Despite being coached since he was six, he’s still a rookie in high school pole vaulting competitions because he never has had the experience of those meets.

“[I] Hit on my takeoff hard and inversions have been a couple of my bigger struggles,” Kyle said. “Also locking my arms out.”

Though Kyle hasn’t been on the team as long as co-captain and senior Caroline Gorman, she’s already seen his bond with his dad first hand when they talk about old stories or memories from the past.

“I think their dynamic is really fun to watch and I think it’s been a really good way to kind of see his coaching style,” Gorman said.