40. Tye Harvey and Jeremy Scott

"Tito" and "Grande" hopped on the podcast today and we could have went for hours and hours!  What a great conversation about their development personally in the pole vault, what it took of them to become successful post collegiate pole vaulters, the epic transformation of Essx vaulting pole, and they offered some assistence in my goal of getting Earl Bell on the podcast.  Two incredibly kind and sharp individuals, thanks for coming on guys!!!

“We Live For PR’s” This is what ESSX Vaulting Poles is all about. If you have been to any meets over the last few years you’ve notice a large number of Yellow Poles being used and many of those are making the podium. ESSX has changed the way poles are designed; Engineered by joining carbon and glass allowing for a smaller diameter, lighter carrier weight and more durable pole. ESSX Poles are trusted by many of the best Coaches and Athletes around the world to help them get over the bar. If you want to learn more or get a grip on some of these poles head over to www.ust-essx.com to find your local dealer.

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Transcript

Jake Winder: (00:00)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the One More Jump podcast by Rise Pole Vault. Today's episode is sponsored by Essex Vaulting Polls. Thank you so much to Essex for their support of the podcast. And if you want to head over to www.ustessex.com and you can check out what they got going on over there which is a lot, those poles are popping up all over the place now. So our guests today are Jeremy Scott and Ty Harvey, also known as Grande and Tito. I grew up watching these two pole vault and they had incredible accomplishment accomplishments throughout their career. And I was just really honored to have them on the podcast. And we had great discussion. Just incredibly smart human beings, these two guys and very accomplished athletes. They're also very involved in Essex and the development of this, this brand of Essex and the, and the Poles.

Jake Winder: (01:07)
The, it was really, really cool to hear about like what went into building these poles and turns out that there was a lot of input, you know, by real elite pole vaulters, which is very, very cool. Yeah, in this episode I had covid, I was really not feeling so hot but I was all jacked up on some caffeine and throat coat tea. So I just apologized for my voice. It just sounded not so, not so good. But I'm all better. It's all good now. And yeah, so hope you enjoyed this episode of the podcast with Jeremy Scott and Ty Harvey. All right, this is a little bit too much here. And you know, I've had to, to edit some and things like that. So

Tye Harvey: (02:11)
Anyway, yeah, just can, candidly, I've been pretty open about, you know the, the human body and and so you may have to edit some of my stuff cuz a lot of, a lot of my story and background is, has, has some nudity in it.

Jake Winder: (02:27)
.

Jake Winder: (02:30)
Okay. Well maybe the video version of this doesn't need to be posted either. , I don't know. Hopefully we keep it under control. But anyway, yeah, so, and, and we roll right into it. I think ties, nudity, comment is a great way to segue into the podcast. But I just, I don't, I mean, I followed you guys a lot whenever I was younger. You guys were part of that two thousands like neo vault era, so we got to watch you guys, guys on neo vault and, and follow, you know, not as much as we can follow people now, for sure, but I, I kept close tabs on both of you and, and really enjoyed watching your careers. But I don't know, I know more about Jeremy's background because I was a division three pole vaulter, a

Jeremy Scott: (03:19)
Three baby. Yeah.

Jake Winder: (03:20)
. And, and he, he was an outstanding, I think you, I mean you've gotta still be the record holder at five 70 or something, right?

Jeremy Scott: (03:29)
I think so.

Jake Winder: (03:31)
Yeah. Yeah. Well we didn't, I didn't even know your name to be honest with you. My my dad coached at North Central College and we just referred to you as Allegheny that

Jeremy Scott: (03:43)


Jake Winder: (03:44)
And, and literally I would like come to the workout and they'd be like, did you hear, did you hear Allegheny jump jump five 60? I'm like, you guys gotta figure this guy's name out, man. Like, just call him Allegheny the

Jeremy Scott: (03:57)
Whole time. Don't, don't feel too bad. Some of one of my training partners brothers didn't know my real name either. He just always knew me as El Grande, which is . And it took probably about three or four months before somebody called me by my real name and he's like, wait, that's you

Jake Winder: (04:15)
, that's hilarious. And then John Ryland. Yeah. And then I know Ty, I know you from having just one of my favorite vaults to watch. I just really enjoyed watching your vault and how you put it all together. Yeah, , but I don't know much about you guys' background, so I don't know, why don't we start with Ty and then just like quick synopsis, cuz I can already tell that this is probably gonna be one that goes for a really long time. So like, where did you start, you know, your kind of path through, you know, to where you're at now?

Tye Harvey: (04:52)
Hmm. Yeah. Much like a lot of pole vaulters and especially I think

Jake Winder: (04:59)
Today's episode is sponsored by Essex vaulting poles. We live for prs. This is what Essex vaulting polls is all about. If you have been to any meets over the last few years, you've noticed a large number of yellow poles being used and many of those are making the podium. Essex has changed the way poles are designed, engineered by joining carbon and glass, allowing for a smaller diameter, lighter carrying weight, and a more durable pole. Essex vaulting poles are trusted by many of the best coaches and athletes around the world to help them get over the bar. If you want to learn more or get a grip on some of these great poles, head over to www.ustessex.com to find your local dealer.

Tye Harvey: (05:47)
Maybe some congruency with Toby Stevenson. I grew up on a, on a ranch, a cattle ranch, but instead of in the oil fields of West Texas, I was, was, I was in the, the Sierra Nevadas in California kind of by Yosemite National Park. It is like, it's a beautiful spot. I grew up in a little mountain community called Sonora. And you know, that whole little mountain town, it's a, it's gold mining is the history in that area. And like they still have state parks that are, you know, like old timer, you know, mining communities that where you go as a tourist and you get to dress up and you know, see how they used to mine gold and and all that stuff. Yeah. So my dad is a cattle rancher and he's like the old school kind of cattle rancher does everything horseback. And you know, like where Toby would say, you know, his dad is one of the smartest people he he knows in the world. I would say my dad is one of the toughest people I know in the world. And he, he always had like bleeding body parts and broken bones and he would continue on with daily life. Like, like it was just, you know, normal and would never complain. Like, so tough. Anyway, yeah, that's my background. I grew up in a small town in northern California on the cattle ranch,

Jake Winder: (07:15)
Cattle ranch, right on. And Jeremy,

Jeremy Scott: (07:19)
I'm from Norfolk, Nebraska, just a little town in the northeast corner and great kind of listening to those stories. It's crazy. And I know you and your dad are really close, it's just kinda crazy the influence dad could have on, on a kid's life. But I also look up to my dad. He was a mechanic and you know, he owned his own shop and that's really, that's kind of how I got into, I didn't realize it at the time, but my love for mechanics and figuring out how things work and how to fix stuff, I think is what really kind of sparked my interest in orthopedics, which is what I'm doing now. But you know, hardworking family and then you know, it was, it was tough, but going out to Allegheny, out to Pennsylvania was tough to leave, but I think pretty important for for me to kind of grow and develop into my own person and get away.

Jeremy Scott: (08:18)
And but I mean that's, that's kind of the, I guess the background. I mean, it, not, not much. I, I think one of the big stories was is that I went to, went to college, actually chose Allegheny originally to play football. I was gonna go to South Dakota. My, my sister went there the same time Derek Miles did. And so he was a big influencer to me early on as far as my pole vault career. But I was gonna go play football there. And the offensive coordinator took the head coaching job at Allegheny, which is why originally went out to to Pennsylvania. So how

Jake Winder: (09:00)
Did you involved in high school?

Jeremy Scott: (09:02)
Not very high by today's standards. 15 two.

Jake Winder: (09:07)
Yeah, by today's standards everybody didn't vault high ?

Jeremy Scott: (09:11)
No, I mean, it just crazy. But like was the Nebraska state champ my senior year and I kind of thought that was the way I was gonna leave my pole vaulting career. I thought I was gonna just leave it, leave it on a win and Right. Just go play football. And I knew at that point I kind of wanted to do something in the medical field and taught that an opportunity to go to Allegheny in a different part of the country with different scenery and different faces and to go play football and kinda get me set to go to medical school afterwards.

Jake Winder: (09:47)
Right, right. And Ty how hard, how high did you go in high school?

Tye Harvey: (09:51)
I my senior year I jumped five 20.

Jake Winder: (09:53)
Holy cow. Okay. Geez.

Jeremy Scott: (09:55)
Yeah,

Jake Winder: (09:56)
That's legit. Yeah, for real. See, but like, you're part from part of a California that, like everybody, whenever people from where I'm from and where Jeremy's from, think about Cal, California maybe like, it's like beach and like, you know, just the California surfer vibe type thing, but like that Yosemite area is, that's a different, like that's a different part of California, you know? It's pretty crazy.

Tye Harvey: (10:22)
Yeah. The weather is different. I mean, I was on our ski team, right? Like, wow. Yeah. I raced, I rad Like we, I taught snow skiing at our little hill, right? 30 minutes from our house, it called Dodge Ridge. Actually, it's fun. I, I got to take my kids the last two Christmases, we've gone back to the ranch, I've got to take my kids to the same hill. I learned how to ski on and taught skiing to the little ski we guys, the little, the little kids. I got to teach my kids. It was like super fun. Yeah, super fun. Yeah. very

Jake Winder: (10:55)
Different. Did you, did you guys have like a lot of like resources and equipment? Like, cuz I, I'm thinking of Yosemite, like, so you're from Sonora, so Yosemite, like, that's, that's pretty far out out there, right? Is it, is it like a pretty, I don't wanna say desolate, but just like, kind of just a way away from everything?

Tye Harvey: (11:19)
Yeah. It, it's in the foothills, in the sticks, but okay, so resources. So that, that's an interesting word. We, you know, there's human resources as there's, as pig

Jake Winder: (11:29)
And

Tye Harvey: (11:30)
Stuff. So in terms of supply pole vault supplies, we had like horrible, like next to nothing like, you know, Toby Stevenson level, you know, stuff, you know what I mean? He, he just, he says it so well, like that, that whole evolution of how he, how he became a pole vaulter is, it really rings true with me. Like we had very little resources, but we had, in terms of people who cared a lot about the community and the kids, we had like a, just a never ending supply of people who would put all their energy and effort into helping kids like me at that time. So we had a cinder track. We, I mean, we had a dirt track, you know, I ran, I, I ran a, it's my kind claim to fame. I ran a 49 on a cinder track, right? A 49 400, which I was really proud of.

Tye Harvey: (12:18)
Like, and that's hard to do on a cinder track. And I was like, oh, and that, but I didn't run, you know, I, I didn't, pole vault takes so long, right? Like, you start the, you start at the beginning of the meet and, and you're the last people on the track and it's dark and everybody's gone, or, you know, like it's, that's how the pole vault rolls in high school. And especially, you know, as, as you have a, a discrepancy in the, the level of athlete, right? You have like these six footers and seven footers starting to meet and then they're going up by three inch increments and then you have a, like a, you know, a 16 or 17 footer in the meat and it, and it takes a long time. So I didn't get to do all the other events like I really wanted to in, in, but we had, in terms of like coaches in high school, you know, like Jim Rober, our head coach, he cared a lot about what he did and just dumped his life into the kids.

Tye Harvey: (13:12)
And he was also an English teacher and really smart man. And, and then Adam Stratton, this guy. So I'm, I'm at the track. I didn't have a coach like a pole vault specific coach my freshman year. I'm out there just jumping and trying to figure it out with, we had two poles, like, we had like a, a yellow catapult. It was like a 15 foot pole and one 60 and a, and a blue or black cat. That was like a, I dunno, something that didn't bend. And I was like straight polling. I remember my freshman year just trying to figure it out and I, I jumped, I don't know, I dunno, probably like nine, 10 feet or something like that. And, and then my sophomore year, first part of track season, I'm out there trying to do it again. And this guy Adam Stratton shows up and he like, comes up this a little like bubbly, you know, happy go-lucky kind of kind of guy, young man.

Tye Harvey: (14:03)
And he like comes over to the runway and he goes, Hey man, I know how to pole ball. Do you, do you have a coach? And I'm like, no, I don't have a coach. And he is like, well, do you want me to help you? And I'm like, yeah, sure, . And so Adam Stratton was jumping for Coach Fraley at Fresno State, and he was with that whole whole crew of guy guys like Jimmy Jack Draft and you know, Derek Slick was down there and Frank Burke I think was there and maybe Dave Cox era, like right in that ar you know, I think Dave was a little younger, but like right in that, right in that era and, and apparent sorry, let me end. I'm getting a call. Let me just end this for a second. How do I send a voicemail? Yeah.

Tye Harvey: (14:46)
So yeah, so then, so then Adam, he starts coaching me and he was 22 years old at the time, and I, I was like, what? 15? And we became fast friends and then, like the whole high school experience really changed for me because he and I every day would do something related to pole vault. Usually not, I mean, usually not pole vault, but like pool vaulting in the summer, almost literally, almost every single day we would pool vault at his aunt and uncle's house and just like try to throw back flips and gainers and like just smack the water and keep going. And we'd go, you know, living, growing up in the mountains, we had tons of like rivers with big high cliffs and we'd go cliff jumping like almost every day in the summer. We had, we, we would always be doing something.

Tye Harvey: (15:41)
And then like he would, he became an assistant coach, the high school. So he had all the keys, right? So like at like 10 o'clock at night, we would, on school nights even, we would get the keys and go to the rec gym and set up, they had these old trampolines for old style, old style gymnastics where they'd run down a runway and hit this tramp and they would do flips and stick it like, kind of like the horse, but it was on a trampoline. And we'd set that up in front of the, the basketball goals and we'd be doing flips and slamming. We put pads out , and

Jake Winder: (16:13)
It would be That's awesome.

Tye Harvey: (16:14)
Oh, it'd be incredible. Like he and I, and then we'd set up gymnastics equipment. This was before like they outlawed all that stuff, right? And, and you had to ha now you gotta have coaches and all the appropriate stuff. But we would set up the high bars and the parallel bars in the gym with nobody, but he and I blasting, you know, van Halen and just, and just go to work. And it wasn't work. It was super fun. And we would just play and play till midnight and then we'd, you know, go to school the next day and do it again all. And that's like, that's what my whole high school career was basically like. I kind of missed out on some of the like standard high school experiences because I was so just in immersed in this moment and, and this world of, of just experiencing your body and space and time in so many different ways. We would rock climb and, and I started paragliding and you know, just all this stuff. Yeah. It's all like grande go. I've taken, I'm taking too much time.

Jake Winder: (17:15)
Well, really quick, before, before we do that, where, where did you go to college? I should know that, but I

Tye Harvey: (17:20)
Don't. University of Minnesota.

Jake Winder: (17:22)
I knew that. Okay. I really did know that. I swear I just needed to be reminded of it. Yeah, that's interesting that you went from California to the University of Minnesota, but that's, that worked out well for you. So Grande goes to Allegheny and pops off at Allegheny. So you were gonna originally play football and you were planning to not pole vault.

Jeremy Scott: (17:53)
Yeah. Yep. I I really thought that my my track career was done when when I, that's crazy. I left I, I mean I did, we have like the Cornhusker state games in the summer, and that was like, I didn't even pull vault then. I went and just wanted to try high jumping and triple jumping one time. And I don't remember what I did, but I wanted to go do it. And, but that was like my, the last time I thought I was ever gonna pull vault, I was like, what a great way to end on a state championship. Right?

Jeremy Scott: (18:28)
And went out there. I, I really, I really did. Football's still probably my favorite sport to play. I miss it a lot. But it's even at that smaller level it's just a different game from high school. I mean, you're, you're up early for meetings. You meet together at lunch for meetings, you have practice by the time you're done with getting through the training room and practice and afterwards and going to watch film at in the evening and studying the playbook, like at a pretty, pretty tough academic school. Like I was, you know, as a freshman just, and being far away from home, I I was, I was just pooped. Like I was, I was kind of done. And, and this is the honest to goodness truth, like the reason that I ended up going going back out for track, one of our, one of our running backs was a sprinter on the track team, and he, they found out that I had pole vaulted and, you know, it was a little school, so like the school record was, it's only like 13 nine or 14 two, something really low

Jake Winder: (19:39)
At that. At Allegheny?

Jeremy Scott: (19:40)
At Allegheny, yeah. Oh, wow. And we, we also at that point had a sender track. Now it's a really, really nice track, but yeah. He, he was like, Hey, like you should come out, like you could break the school record, you could win conference. And and he is like, and they're like, I was like, yeah, whatever, whatever. Not, not a big deal. And then he is like, the selling point was if you go out for track, you don't have to do the 5:00 AM workouts in the spring.

Jake Winder: (20:06)
Oh,

Jeremy Scott: (20:06)
for football. And I was like, no way. got it. Yes. Like, okay. Like that was the, the, so it's crazy that something so, so good turned out really kind of out of my own laziness or desperation of not wanting to get up at that early. And I mean at that point still, I mean, I grew, I grew about an inch every year in, in college still.

Jake Winder: (20:34)
And then how, how tall are you? Because they, people are probably like, why do they call him grande?

Jeremy Scott: (20:40)
How tall? So my official height is six, nine and three quarters. There

Jake Winder: (20:43)
We go. . So,

Jeremy Scott: (20:44)
So when I, when I got to college, I was about six, six and then grew six, seven at the end of my freshman year. 6, 8, 6 9 as at the end of my junior and grew still like three quarters of an inch as a senior. And so like, I was just not the same person. I mean, almost from year to year as far as physically. And so by the end of even at limited resources, we ended up getting some poles by the end of my freshman year. And I ended up getting second at nationals and jumped 16, two or three. And then actually had a stress fracture. I broke my foot playing football my sophomore year, but got in, I got second again with 16, nine or 10. But coming from a short run, I think 12 steps. And then my junior year, just like things really started to catch up, I jumped 18 three as a junior and then 18 eight indoors of, of my senior year and then had a hamstring injury that I didn't compete outdoors, so.

Jake Winder: (21:56)
Oh, okay. So I have always been under the assumption that you were just like, this D three is not good enough for me. I'm done. I need to get outta here. And then you went to Arkansas, so there was actually injury.

Jeremy Scott: (22:08)
Yeah. Don, I don't like to bring that up. Yeah, I, I hurt my hamstring and I, my time at Arkansas, I, I did meet a few good people, but not not my favorite experience there.

Jake Winder: (22:19)
Is that right?

Jeremy Scott: (22:21)
Yeah,

Jake Winder: (22:21)
I, yeah, I know about that. I went to Alabama my freshman year of high school mm-hmm. or high school of college. And it just, I was just like, it just wasn't, you know, for me. And, you know, that's, that's something that I think is a good thing for kids to understand. You know, because there's this whole divisions thing like, you know, division three and Division one two and division one, and they think maybe the grass is always greener on the other side you know, at that maybe bigger division one school or whatever. But it's not always the case, you

Jeremy Scott: (22:58)
Know? No, and, and I mean, I, I mean, a lot of my dissatisfaction there went back to the academic stuff. There was a lot of personal stuff there too as well. But I just, I couldn't believe the the difference in the support and, you know, being the big fish in the small pond, even from the track and field side, like how, how much Allegheny would go out of the way to make me successful and not, and, and, and that goes in the classroom and track and field the, the mentorship from professors and the way they would kinda work things around to make sure I was able to, to meet all my goals. And it just wasn't like that. At, at Arkansas.

Jake Winder: (23:41)
Yeah. That was the exact same thing for me. I went to Alabama, was like, I, you know, it was like all of a sudden, and Ty, I don't know if it was similar at Minnesota, I don't know how big University of Minnesota is, but I would be in lecture halls of like 800 people and I was like, hold on, this is the class. Like, this is insane. Like, I, and I was just like, it was like a concert, you know, for, for a class. And, and, and you know, I was like, there's not a chance in this world of me ever me even meeting that guy, you know, who was the professor , you know? And then I, I transferred to North Central and I, I transferred, this is embarrassing to say, but I transferred with 16, 16 of my 32 credits at Alabama transferred. Cuz I just did so terribly down there, it was embarrassingly bad. But I got to North Central and this lady was like, Hey, I'm gonna do a private study with you. It's gonna be me and you, and this is gonna count as a credit and, and you just gotta come in. And it was like one-on-one just to help me get back on track. It was cuz of smaller schools more manageable. Mm-Hmm. . And I was like, wow, that's pretty crazy. How big, how big is University of Minnesota whenever you were there, Ty?

Tye Harvey: (24:58)
Yeah, so at the time it was the largest or second largest. It would like ki kind of bounce back and forth between like an Ohio state. Yeah, it was like in the top, top five for sure. Larger schools in the country. It was massive, like, I don't know, 65,000 student, student body, it was, or some, some massive, massive school. And it's split on three different campuses. So the Mississippi River, believe it or not, Mississippi River splits the campus on the west side, which is kind of the sciences, no, sorry, the east side, which is kind of the sciences and academic side. And then the, the, the west campus was the art, art campus. And then, and then St. Paul, which was a short bus ride away or a bike ride away. Yeah, I, me, I have great memories of like, on the bus route where buses could only go on this road.

Tye Harvey: (25:51)
It was like a thoroughfare for buses. I would get on my bike and I'd draft, and I remember one time , the, the bus driver stopped and pulled over and I'm like, oh, it's funny, I don't remember this. Stop being here. So like, I slow down and I stopped behind the bus and it just stays there and it's got a, like a bus full of people. And I'm like, man, what's going on? And he gets off the bus and walks back and politely told me to not, not draft anymore. So that was the end of my, my drafting career. But yeah huge campus, massive student body. You bump it, you, you never see anybody like again, econ one oh 1000 people right in this huge auditorium and you're watching a movie screen and it's a 7:00 AM class and it's hor it's just horrible.

Tye Harvey: (26:33)
Like why would you ever want to do that? But, but I will say the athletic program was amazing. So the reason I went to Minnesota was because of a guy named Phil Waine, who was the, the jumps coach, the pole vault coach and, and assistant coach and, and another guy named Roy Gak. And it's not because they were exceptional coaches, which Roy had a heck of a track record, pun intended, you know, both in cross country and track in like middle distance and distance and, and just an amazing man with an amazing life. And I miss him, but but, but Phil really didn't have like the pedigree of a pole ball coach, but he was so great to talk to and so like engaged and c and like deeply passionate and caring and would provide, he's like, man, I'll observe and I'll do the best I can.

Tye Harvey: (27:25)
I I don't know much about Napole Vault, but I will get you every resource you need to, to jump as best you can. And he did. He, he really, and they have great facilities like yeah, beautiful outdoor and beautiful indoor, like cool, cool place. And and so I, coming from a small town in California and, and knowing kind of how Cal Californians are really California centric. Yeah. They used to be, at least I I don't, I haven't been there in a long time, so I don't Yeah, right. And it's like, that's a little different . Well, like yeah, it is, it is. The, yeah. The whole thing is a lot different, but, but at that point, like, nothing better than California existed. Yeah. In my little, my little pod of people. And I'm like, well, I mean, how do you know that? Like, where, where have you been and what have you done?

Tye Harvey: (28:11)
Right. You know, and I never got a clear answer, so I kind of wanted to go somewhere I had, I knew nothing about. And just explore like, what's out there. And it started like the journey through the Midwest for me. You know, I, I went from the west coast to Minnesota where I met like a, a crazy slew of people that, that are still my closest friend, like some of my closest friends, right. Through track, but also just academics and, you know, I like, like the Stevens brothers, Marty and Dan and Laurie and Jason Raffey, I mean, Boer lic, Bobby Johnson, all these guys, you know, like I can just go on and on with the memory of, and these guys ta I wasn't very academic. Right. I still, I still am not, not super academic. I, I have a poor memory and I'm not that, I'm not that you know, just academically inclined, however, these guys taught me, because you're in these classes with like a thousand people, right?

Tye Harvey: (29:15)
Like Right. You don't learn anything in class. And I'm, I wasn't a good reader, so I didn't read much. And so these guys would take the time to help me learn what I needed to know and like really explore the academic side of school. And it wasn't, if it wasn't for them, like I'd still, I still couldn't talk and write, you know, I at least I can hack my way through life. But, but these guys are really responsible for that. And just great thinkers. Like I, I gravitated toward this group of people who were thinkers and it, and it actually fits with the pole vault really well. A guy named Mark Erickson was at the University of Minnesota and he was jumping in the mid eighteens and like I, I met a whole, that's the other cool thing about Minnesota was they, they could import all the foreigners, like from Scandinavia.

Tye Harvey: (29:58)
Yeah. Cause it was Right, right. It was cold all the dang time. Yeah. And nobody else wanted to go. So like, we had, we had, gosh, like Benjamin Benjamin Jensen, who was the world junior decathlon champion at the time, we had Glenn Lindquist, which was who was also Decathlete. We had Stefan Strand who was a high jumper, like one of the best in the world at the time. Like, like tons of like foreign and, and as it turns out, like this was just an added benefit in the summers, they'd be like, whoa, we're going home to compete and you can come over and stay with us. And so, like my first experience That's awesome. Yeah. Oh, it was incredible. Like, you and I would get on these like sea circuit meets, you know, and get to compete in front of stadiums and people in Europe. And it was like, and I met, then I met like Patrick Christensen and like Renz Bloom and Lars Burg Lane, all these Europeans were there and I got to meet and just become part of their family. And that's awesome. Minnesota was a great, a great kind of, yeah, just, I don't know, it just like, you know, whatever it is,

Jake Winder: (31:03)
It's just odd. Like, I I I would not have pictured somebody like going from California to Minnesota, this, I mean, nothing, nothing against it. I just like, I feel like that's a, just a different unique transition. You know, usually you go the opposite way. You go from Minnesota to California, you know, like, yeah. But I don't know, I just find it fascinating that, that you were like, yeah, I'm gonna go from California to Minnesota, and then you made it work and, and it, and it worked out for you. It's pretty cool.

Tye Harvey: (31:35)
I remember the recruiting trip. Yeah. It was in the spring and I was like, Ooh, it's like 20 degrees. Like this is as cold as it must get, you know? Oh, so naive. Right. . And I'm like, man, it's freezing. But the sun was out and you know, the snow on the ground was like melting. And I'm like, okay, I can, I can handle this. That was kind of a big concern. And

Jake Winder: (31:54)
My brother, my brother lives in Minneapolis and he, he was like, dude, I got, you know, 24 inches of snow coming my way in the next, you know, 12 hours or something. I was like, you know, it's like, it just gets so cold. Like ne he'll be like, yeah, like wind chills, like negative 40 and like, it's like next, next level stuff, you know, in Chicago gets cold too, but Yeah, it doesn't get that cold.

Tye Harvey: (32:21)
Well, it gets really windy of course in Chicago with that wind, but, but Minneapolis, so my freshman year, grande, you, you could maybe look this up while we're talking. This is phenomenal. Like we had record breaking low temperatures my freshman year. I remember being in the dorm on the third story and having a cup of water open the window and like chuck the cup of water out and before it hits the ground, it's like ice, it's like turning into little snowflakes. Oh yeah. And it was like, God, I wanna say it was like, you know, 30 below without wind chill, that was like straight temperature, 30 below. And I, you know, like the coldest I haven't ever experienced in the mountains in California was like 20, you

Jake Winder: (33:02)
Know? Right, right.

Tye Harvey: (33:04)
And for those who

Jake Winder: (33:05)
Say, does it, does it get that cold in that, in that mountain range? Like up towards the, towards the top? Like does it get below zero up there?

Tye Harvey: (33:15)
Oh yeah, it will. Yeah. It, the higher elevations, it, it definitely gets blizzard. We would take my dad again, my dad's old school. Right. So we, so in the summers, one of my jobs was at a pack station. It's called Kennedy Meadows. It's up in the, in the Yosemite area. Yeah,

Jake Winder: (33:31)
I know Kennedy Meadows. Oh, you do. I know the area. I, I'm fascinated with that area, like the John Muir Trail and, and like all that that goes to, I'm a big backpacker and it's one of my one of my trips that I want to want to take someday. So

Tye Harvey: (33:44)
Well hit me up before you do that and we'll talk.

Jake Winder: (33:46)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I would love to.

Tye Harvey: (33:49)
I I explored all that country in high school. I would pack like, you know, the owner of that place Willie Ritz was a really good friend in, and they went to high school together with my dad. And my dad owned a pack station in Bear Valley at that time before I was born. And anyway, so long history of horses and packing mules and stuff. So right in high school I would pack a lot of these like corporate groups where Willie would get overwhelmed with like, these people that wanna go in the mountains and, and he would need help. And so I'd go up and help and I'd take these packers, you know, these with my dad. We'd pack these, this group in, you know, 10 miles into the high country and to a alpine lake. That's right. Pristine with trout and fishing and nobody else there.

Tye Harvey: (34:31)
Yeah. For like a week we'd stay there and we'd cook them food and, you know, wa you know, make sure all the animals were fine and fed and safe. Cuz you, you'll shackle the horses in these meadows. It'll be like a box canyon where there's only one way in and one way out. And you'll, and you'll shackle the horses at night so they can't go too far. And then you like, and you'll put a bell on 'em so they ding, ding, ding the bell and you can hear it the canyon. And then you'll like get, you know, three in the morning you'll go find them and you'll kind of bring them back into the canyon. You'll start to like, work their way out of the canyon and then without, like, without a horse. It's a long walk back. Yeah. You know, so. Absolutely. So anyway, and then you'd cook for 'em and you'd, you know, guide 'em on the fishing and like all that whole experience in the mountains was, was a big part of my life. And, and, and man, I, I miss the mountains for sure. Being in Austin, Texas now, like tho those mountains definitely call me. And, and I have to go back every once in a while, you know,

Jake Winder: (35:27)
That's the classic John Muir quote. Right. The mountains are calling and I must go. I yeah, so fast forward to, so Ty, really quick, what is, how, what was your personal best in college?

Tye Harvey: (35:42)
55. I jumped 55. 5 55? Yeah.

Jake Winder: (35:45)
Okay. Yeah. and then Jeremy, yours was like 70 something Yeah,

Jeremy Scott: (35:50)
From 70 18, 8.

Jake Winder: (35:51)
Okay, got you. Yeah. So how do you guys, Jeremy, we'll start with you. How do you end up at Bell Athletics?

Jeremy Scott: (36:01)
So I kind of talked about it a little bit ago with my sister went to South Dakota the same time Derek Miles did. And so, and kind of once I fell back into pole vaulting, he was an easy contact and you know, we'd, we'd talk you know, of course he was done with school, but just kind of starting off on his professional career. And I remember the first time that he went down, I think he met Earl and the, and kind of the crew at, at the Drake relays. And he went down and I just remember how excited he was about his trip down there. And then he's like telling my sister, like, tell your brother he is gotta go down there. And then I then, like, I ended up talking with him. He was like, dude, you gotta go down.

Jeremy Scott: (36:47)
You gotta go down. And so in between my sophomore and junior year, I mean, I, I had the injury, but I was really kind of disappointed with kind of coming up as a runner up two years in a row. And I was like, that's not gonna happen again. Like, it's not gonna happen. And that's kind of the thing that pushed me over to the edge, that like, I, I'm gonna go down there and get help. Like, I don't care if I'm running from a short run, like I, I, I know I can jump higher, I'm gonna go and, and work with the guy that's gonna get it out of me. And so I went down there and just, just loved it. Kinda the same deal, just was energized. I was down there for a camp probably kinda the middle of the summer.

Jeremy Scott: (37:36)
I had enough time, like about a month later I went back for another one and called my college coach up and I was like, Hey, like I think I can come down. I think they'd be okay if, if I would keep coming down here. Is that okay with you? And so he was like, yeah, like we, we had kind of minimal coaching and minimal resources and they're like, let's we, we'll make it work. And so what I would tend to do is I, I had all my classes scheduled for Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and I would usually, like the week after a test, like they, it seemed like they always fall in the same week. Right. It's just kind of how Right. How things go. And so on that week after a test, I would skip Friday and skip Monday and kind of the coach would let my professors know he is doing something with track and go basically leave Wednesday after class, go down Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and drive back either Monday night or Tuesday

Jake Winder: (38:40)
You would drive.

Jeremy Scott: (38:42)
Yeah.

Jake Winder: (38:43)
From Pennsylvania.

Jeremy Scott: (38:44)
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah, it's like 15 or 16 hour drive, but you know, it's expensive private school and division three budget, so you weren't, you weren't paying for poles to go and fly in and stuff like that, so. Wow. so that's what I would do. I did that almost every month for the next two years, for my junior and senior year. I'd go down for every four or six weeks.

Jake Winder: (39:10)
So how does it work at Belle? Like when I've never been down, I need to go down there sometime. Mm-Hmm. I, you know, you hear all different types of things. Like you go down, you work with Earl and then is there like a place for you to stay or do you just like stay in a hotel or, or like what do you do?

Jeremy Scott: (39:33)
Yeah, it, it depends. So, you know, we've those camps for a long time and when I first went down there, there were like 40 kids in the camp,

Jake Winder: (39:41)
Sorry about the interruption. We had some sort of wifi dropout or something. Technology is incredible at times, but then at other times the wifi drops out. So back to it. So we were talking about the 40 people.

Jeremy Scott: (39:59)
So it's like the first time I went to a camp Yeah. It was like 40 people. And so I remember going out there, it's in the middle of the summer, middle of July. So it's like the overnight lows are like 95 degrees with 95% humidity and, and like trying to find a spot. So there are some air condition, there's two like bunk rooms that they've been redone now, they're nicer now than what they were when I went, but like, they're air conditioned. But I, I went in there for like a half hour the first day I was there and just like felt like somebody cracking in the face with a hot wet towel when you walked out. And I was like, it's just not worth it. And so I went and kind of, I'd sleep out on the floor on these little pads right in front of the huge fan you've probably seen in some of the videos, like the big fans that we have, bar

Jake Winder: (40:53)
Fan, big barn fan or

Jeremy Scott: (40:54)
Whatever. Yeah. So it was like right smack dab in front of that on a, like, just trying to like acclimate to the heat and the humidity. Right. but that's kind of, I mean, when I, that was how I first got there. Then as I kept going down, then I'd usually sleep down there in in those bunk rooms. And for a little while actually Daniel Ryland lived in that apartment in the building. So after I'd been coming down for a little while, I'd stay up there in one of those rooms in an actual bed and, you know, just kind of made it work. Like, it, it I got so much better, even if, you know, if I, if I was struggling with something, it's like I could go down there and figure it out and maybe I didn't jump higher while I was down there, but within the next couple of weeks I knew I was gonna jump higher and, and it was, yeah, it was kind of crazy.

Jeremy Scott: (41:48)
It's like, but I didn't even have a cell phone for most of that time, so it's like, just remember like singing at the top of my lungs to the radio for my own entertainment. And it's like, like there's a few areas where I knew like, I can't wait till I get, like, going through Columbus, there's this awesome kind of rock station that I loved, like they'd played corn and Yeah. Godsmack. And it's like, yes, like this station's awesome. Like I couldn't wait for like that hilarious like two hours of, of radio time. And then there was another one kind of in central Kentucky that was more of like alternative. And so it's like, I kinda remember I did it so often that's like, okay, like I've got this, this section of time where like, I gotta let my voice rest. Like, let's get some water, like save it kinda like you're doing yesterday , so I can really be on my game even though I'm by myself in my car. And

Jake Winder: (42:44)
That's so

Jeremy Scott: (42:45)
Funny. Just going away. But it's like, yeah. I mean, I I, you'd go down there, it was always worth a trip and it's great to see at that point I think you were living there full-time. Mm-Hmm. and or just about ready to, to take off, I think, I can't remember. I know you were there for a little bit, but seeing Jeff and Jill and Kelly and it was always like, just a recharge and you knew you were gonna get something good out of it and fix whatever you were struggling and you know, eventually, I mean I, at that point I was kinda set on going to medical school and had got everything. Like I took my MCATs, I'd done all that stuff to do it. And like, like I said before, like my junior year, just, I got so much better and kind of brought it up to Earl's like, hey, like would it be, would be okay. Like if I'd come down here after I graduate. And he goes, oh yes. Like thank goodness, like I didn't wanna ask you cuz I didn't wanna screw up the medical school thing, but I'm really happy you did. So yeah, like, when you're done, come like, keep coming down here like you're doing and, and we'll, we'll have a place for you when, when you graduate. So,

Jake Winder: (43:55)
Wow, that's really crazy. Like that commitment to like drive that that many times, that's really, really crazy. Good for you. And then Ty, so how did it work with your transition to Bell?

Tye Harvey: (44:10)
Mm. Yeah, the, so I, I didn't know Earl other than a few videos that I had watched, you know, like growing up like, you know, the Buka videos and the Earl Bell videos and stuff. So I really didn't know much or anything that he had a training center in Arkansas. I didn't know where he lived and really knew nothing about him. And I, I didn't know, know what I wanted to do after college. I had this girlfriend that broke my heart at the end of college and I was kind of like, well, now what do I do? And and so there was, at nationals, there was this guy going around who said, Hey, we're starting this club in Indiana called the Indiana Invaders. And it was, and it was mostly like a, a, a running club, but he's like, we're gonna do some field events at I U P U Y and stuff.

Tye Harvey: (44:56)
And so I just, after college I threw, I had a motorcycle, I, that's all I had. And my roommate had a van, so he like threw my motorcycle in the van or actually on a trailer behind the van. And I had just a couple bags of clothes and I went down there and I remember we pulled into the parking lot of this apartment where we were like, the invaders were like supposed to be, you know, put up and all this stuff. And, and it was, the sun came up, we slept in the car and the sun came up and it was like full ghetto, like full on ghetto cars, on blocks, like all that stuff, right? And so like, I check in and I know nobody, and there's no place, like I, I don't have, I have like just under $300 to my name at that point.

Tye Harvey: (45:37)
And so like, I had no money to pay for anything and, and I called Gray, I called the guy that's like heading this up and I'm like, man, is there anybody that I could stay with for the next few nights until I find a job? And he's like, oh yeah, I'll hook you up with this guy Phil McMullen. And, and so I, they, Phil is like my, still one of my best friends today. Like I, every time I, anyway, one of my best buds and he's like, yeah, sure. You know, he's a, he has a fiance and they're in an apartment and they're like, yeah, sleep on our floor. So like, I start sleep, I have my camping gear and, and that's all I need, right? So I'm on a Therma rest and a sleeping bag. And, and that's how I, I I was introduced to Indianapolis and I started training there, but all I had was five full run poles that Minnesota gave me at the end.

Tye Harvey: (46:24)
So I had no short run poles and they didn't have anything, zero pole vault stuff. And so I started training with Phil as a de like he's a decathlete kicking my butt. And like the four we're doing repeat 400 s and stuff. Like, yeah, like completely not pole vault related, but I didn't know I, so anyway, we're training together and I'm getting really fit, but I'm not pole vaulting. And every time I try to pole vault, I land on the runway because I don't have any poles. I'm in like a, I have five big poles. That's it, right? And so then like, I started expressing my frustration to, to our leader and he's like, man, there's this girl as part of our club named Shannon Gallagher, and she went down to this place called Bell Athletics in Arkansas. And I'm like, okay, you can't, and you didn't have internet, right?

Tye Harvey: (47:10)
So like, I didn't have a phone with internet, so you couldn't look that up. So like, I just, I'm just like, okay, well, and so I talked to Shannon on the phone and Shannon and Shona is like, Hey, I'll talk to Earl, why don't you come down? And so, so I did. So like I, I rode my motorcycle down there and the first experience was amazing. Like I was really fit and I had no clue about pole vault. And like, we started at two steps and I'm like, what in the world? Like, I'm not full running, like, what's going on? And, and like I made this super quick progression and just, I was like pring the first day I was there and Earl was amazing and like the facil and like, it felt like home to me out in a bean field in the middle of nowhere is, is where I grew up and what I was comfortable with.

Tye Harvey: (47:55)
Like, it just felt like home and like redneck engineering was, you know, predominantly employed as the main method of doing everything right. And I, like, I fit right into that. And I was like building stuff for him and welding things together and building platforms. And he had these hurdles, which I don't know if he still does, but made out of pvc. And Earl is freaking genius. That guy can make stuff from nothing and make it look and work really well. He's, he is incredibly industrious and resourceful. And so like, I just kind of fit right into that mold. And I came down and then I went back and I struggled up there for another month or two or whatever it was. And I came back to Bell Athletics. And after the second trip, Earl's like, what are you doing? Like, just move down here, right?

Tye Harvey: (48:42)
I'm like, I'm like, okay, cool. So I went back to Indie, which was like a nine hour drive and I, and I didn't have a car, so I, I went to an auction and bought like a 1960 something Volkswagen bus that wouldn't go out of third gear. When I bought it I realized, whoa, this thing hasn't really bad exhaust leak and it won't even shift out of third gear. It doesn't have reverse clutch is going out. So like I get it home that night and the next day, like I, I bailing wire the, the shifter link back together and I can go through the gears now. K Clutch is still going out. I put my motorcycle inside the bus , I take out the middle seat, I leave the middle seat on the sidewalk at the ghetto hotel. Yeah. Ghetto apartment complex. And I put my motorcycle in there and I throw my clothes in and I start going toward Arkansas.

Tye Harvey: (49:36)
The clutch goes out in the first mile. And so every, every, so I drove from Indie to Jonesboro without a clutch and every gas station I'd have to, I'd have to find a gas station on the side of the road. It was kind of downhill or at least, at least flat. And I would coast in, I'd turn off the co, I'd turn it off and I'd just shift her into neutral and I'd coast it in, I'd fill it up with gas and then I'd put it in, in first gear. And in a vita bus, the gearing is low enough that the starter will actually start it in first gear. So like, you know, you turn the key and it's like, and it, and it takes off and you can start, you can start it in gear. So I did and you can't do that anymore cuz you got all these buttons and technology and stuff.

Tye Harvey: (50:20)
But back then no, you, you didn't, you could do it. And so I, I was, that's so cool. And then I made it to Jonesboro and I remember I get there and like one of the, and the next morning I get there late, whatever, and I sleep on the pit. And the next morning I, I remember Earl wakes up and he gets his cup of coffee and he comes out, he has his office downstairs and he like, I, I go outside, I'm like getting my motorcycle out cuz that's my motor transportation. And he like, he's, Hey Tito, you know, I, he didn't call me Tito then yet, but he is like, Hey Ty, like that's a nice motorcycle. And I'm like, thanks, I'm really proud of it. 19, 19 74 CB 504. And and he looked at it and he is like looking at it and I'm thinking like he's admiring this motorcycle and he is like, Hey if, if that doesn't get sold in, in like the first week, it'll end up in that ditch over there, . And I'm like, oh, okay, so no motorcycle. I thought he was joking. And he is like, no, I'm serious. And I'm like, okay. He

Jake Winder: (51:15)
Made you, you sell

Tye Harvey: (51:16)
It? Oh yeah. Like, immediately, immediately.

Jake Winder: (51:19)
So, oh my gosh.

Tye Harvey: (51:20)
Yeah. So I sold that and then we had the, the Volkswagen, we had the, the van and I got it running better and better. I'd slowly working on it. And, and then I remember one day we had this thing, Chad Harding was in the office. He, he was working in the office for Earl and we had this bungee, a couple of the bungees that we used you know, for pole vault bungees. And we made this huge slingshot and we were shooting potatoes into the rice field across the street there in front of the house. And then I'm like, okay, let's take this to the next level. So I get my bus and I rip up and down the road and they're trying to hit me as I drive by going as fast as that bus would

Jake Winder: (52:00)
Go, .

Tye Harvey: (52:00)
And so they did, they tad nailed it right on the side and it put a huge dent in the side of this old bus. And and it made a loud noise and

Jake Winder: (52:10)
Is hilarious.

Tye Harvey: (52:11)
Antics. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, Earl Bell is still like, man, he's like a dad, right? Like he really is like a second dad to me. And he is the most amazing, intuitive, intelligent person and coach on the, I mean, he's just unbelievable. He's, he is really magic. And you know, the guys that would come to Arkansas to find that magic and would leave quickly because of Jonesboro would, would weed themselves out. And what you were left with was a group of people who, who had the self-motivation and drive to make it work in a place that they thought was, was lack. You know, like Jonesboro, Arkansas, that not the greatest place to live, but I thought it was, I thought it was a great place to live. And those people were so dedicated and devoted to what they did. That magic happened. I mean,

Jake Winder: (53:10)
Magic. So you're saying that like Jonesboro almost like itself was like a filter. Like it kinda, I think it was filtered everybody through it and it's like, okay, it really was, you're coming down here to get better at the pole vault, you're chasing after this dream. And you know, you've heard rumors that Earl's the guy who's gonna get you there, but then you go through this filter of Jonesboro, Arkansas, and then whoever comes out on the other side of that actually really wants to, you know, do it and take to the next level. What was, why, why was Jonesboro? I've never been there. Like I said, I have to go, but why was Jonesboro, like, why were people turned off by it?

Jeremy Scott: (53:51)
Man, I think there's a couple of layers to that, right, Ty? I mean, so it it's grown a lot since, since I moved there. But you've got, I mean, first of all, it's a small town. I mean, I think when I first started going there, it was like 50,000 people, which didn't seem that small, but I feel like everybody that lives there for the most part is from there. So it's like kind of hard to crack into different friend circles outside of pole vault. Luckily we had such good people there that it wasn't a necessity. But then you also have like young, we were all single at that point, and it's a dry county, so there's no bars, there's no rest, like, no chain restaurants. So it's like, what are you gonna go do? There's not tons of stuff to go do if you're,

Jake Winder: (54:39)
You know, so the party animals, like it wasn't a very good, good spot for the party animals to go.

Jeremy Scott: (54:45)
Correct? I mean, no, it, it wasn't, but like, I think even if you weren't like a full party animal, like even to go get a, a good steak , like there was one place you could go,

Jeremy Scott: (54:58)
Right? 5 0 1 club. So I mean it's yeah, I mean I think there were definitely obstacles, but like to Ty's point, I mean you had guys that, and imagine like it was a palpable electricity that you could fall, feel walking through the door, really. And I think that's part of why it was, it wasn't really a thing. It wasn't that big of a hindrance to drive. It was 15, 16 hours cuz like, you just felt it walking through the dorm. I'm kind of getting goosebumps thinking about it now. Just that impression. You just felt it walking through the door and you know, you'd see Jeff Hartwig doing his workout first thing in the morning and Kelly was around and then Ty, I, I just remember one of the first weekends I was there watching watching Jeff jump and he jumped like 19 one or two and then Tide jumped like 19 feet in practice and Derek came in and jumped 19 feet in practice. And it's like later in the day Chad jumped 18 eight and you're like, ,

Jake Winder: (56:03)
What,

Jeremy Scott: (56:04)
What's this guy doing? How did he make the Olympic team

Jake Winder: (56:07)
Right? Like

Jeremy Scott: (56:08)
,

Jake Winder: (56:08)
Right?

Jeremy Scott: (56:09)
And it's just like, that's what you and Kelly would jump 15 feet and Jill Schwartz moved there about the same time I did. And like, it just was unbelievable. And like how we all got along, it could, we were all very different people, but complimentary to each other,

Jake Winder: (56:26)
Right?

Jeremy Scott: (56:27)
And it's like, and and Tide talked about like, we just made things work. Our company motto when I was kind of the guy in the office was the leaders, leaders in low tech. It's like we just made stuff work.

Jake Winder: (56:39)
Right? Right. You know, the thing that I found fascinating about bell was like, you guys didn't go in there. Five 80 guys like you guys. And that's the thing is that sometimes what you find nowadays, and I'm not, I'm not saying this is always true, but it's like, okay, somebody jumped, you know, five 80 in college and, and then they, you know, go and then they, you know, continue to jump five 80 somewhere else. You know, there there was a development that happened at Bell, which was so cool and it was like, almost like if you heard of somebody going there like, hey, so-and-so moved down there. It's like, oh man, well that's the next person. You know, like, it's like, because there was, you went there as a good collegiate pole vaulter, you know, but you, but you left there, you know, being an a great post-collegiate pole vaulter, you know, five eighties, five nineties. So that's what I found very fascinating about it. Cuz like Jeff was like, what was he like a 35 guy in college? You know, like Ty, you said you're a 55 guy. Derek, what, what did Derek, John, he said it on the podcast, he

Jeremy Scott: (58:01)
17, four or six in college I think. Yeah, yeah. Like

Jake Winder: (58:05)
30, 35, 5 guy. Yeah. Mm-hmm. . That's just, I don't know, I just find that very fascinating that, that there was development that happened. It's easy to just keep a person healthy and just have 'em do the same thing they've always done, you know, and just jump the same heights. But it's really hard to develop somebody, especially if they've jumped over five 50, like developing people over like that have crossed that threshold. It's, it's a different, different type of thing. So.

Jeremy Scott: (58:33)
Mm. I think it goes back to, I mean, TA can jump in too, but you think it just, it really speaks to Earl as far as, you know, he was always, you emphasize your strengths and you kind of chip away at your weaknesses. And so you, and, and he kinda the opposite. He can turn kind of nothing into something nice, but he always simplified things to the point where it just, he could explain it in a way that you had to work on one thing that would just have such a big domino effect. And then you put that with people like had, like Ty said, that just were willing to go through anything to achieve their dreams. And it just was, was kind of a, this an unbelievable atmosphere and an unbelievable training group to, to where people could achieve those things.

Jake Winder: (59:25)
It's kinda like a perfect storm though, you know, like Yeah. I

Jeremy Scott: (59:28)
Mean, but I think none of that would, none of that would happen without Earl. I mean, I think Ty would agree that right? He just, right. Just so good at at getting you to focus on the, on the thing that mattered most to you as a jumper.

Tye Harvey: (59:43)
Yeah. Yeah. That, that's like, that's well said, Grande, like Earl has a few high level key philosophical components of his coaching that are always there, right? Like the right pole, the right grip, the right run. Like that's the fundamental, right? Like you, you ha those are the first things you have to do. And if you do that, then like the rest is kind of butter. But he would have tests like, okay, if you, if you think about what the, you know, kind of the most important component of pole vaulting is it's speed. That's it. Like it, whoever runs the fastest usually wins the meat, right? Yeah. And so Earl had a, a test for that, which was the 15 meter fly. And we would, and and that's like he was, he always wanted us to know how fast we are at a certain given moment in our training you know, progressions and that, and pretty much like you knew how high you were gonna be able to jump based on how fast you could run. And once you That's

Jake Winder: (01:00:42)
Without a pole. Without a pole.

Tye Harvey: (01:00:44)
Yeah. That's what, that's without a poll. Yeah. Because the conversion, right? Like, and, and Earl is always about the weakest link, like Ronde said, you, you just, all you do is you find the weak link and you strengthen it. So like when coaches ask me like, Hey, what are the number one or two things you work on with every pole vault? I'm like, well I have to respond to that with another question. Like what's their weak link? You, I can't tell you what to work on without knowing where your weak link is. Right. And I even explained to the kids that I'm working with now, like, like I really want you to understand what, I want you to think about what weak link in a chain means. Like, like, cuz you can say the word weak link and never, you know, just kind of glance over it. But really truly, if you have a big chain and you hook it to a tractor and another tree or something and you pull that chain one, only one of the links will break first. Right? Wow.

Jake Winder: (01:01:37)
Yeah.

Tye Harvey: (01:01:37)
And, and so that link has to be strengthened, but what happens when you put that link back together and weld it stronger than it was originally? What happens when you pull on the chain again?

Jake Winder: (01:01:48)
It's gonna be another one that breaks

Tye Harvey: (01:01:50)
A different link. Breaks. Yeah. A different link breaks and so on and so forth. Like throughout your entire career it's always the weak link. And, and Earl was so good at like picking out that weak link, like j and you sometimes they're elusive, these links are elusive, right. Especially at the higher end where you're just nitpicking. And he would figure that out usually without telling us he figured it out and then he, and then he'd just like introduced these things and it would be be like magic. And all of a sudden you're, you're like onto the next thing and you jump a pr like a one inch. And that's the other thing. Like, you don't move the bar up at six inches at a time. You don't move it up a foot at a time. You get a one inch PR and you, and you do that 10 times in a row or 12 times in a row and you're a foot higher in the air. Right. Never did did he move the bar up? More than an inch. I mean that, you know, no matter what. Really? Yeah.

Jake Winder: (01:02:46)
. That's awesome. So what what is it like about what do you think, what do you, so do you think that Earl was, when it's all said and done, he is the reason for all of that? Cuz some people will say, well, it was just like there was a lot of good athletes there and you know, things like that. I I do think it was a perfect storm of like a really good coach that has, that was kind of groundbreaking in having their own facility. Like it, you you could definitely say that he's like the, the godfather of all of these things that are popping up around the country right now. Yeah. Because he was doing, he did that before. You know, anybody that I knew of did it. You know, but this kind of perfect storm of like, oh my gosh, there's like a pole vault training facility that's crazy. Oh my gosh. There's a coach there that knows how to coach. Whoa. That's crazy. Holy cow. The best pole vaulters in the country are training there. Whoa. That's wild. And then it just started circling and then just all of a sudden it turned into what it turned into. What do you think somebody is going to have to do nowadays to recreate that?

Tye Harvey: (01:04:07)
Hmm. Man,

Jake Winder: (01:04:09)
That's a hard one. That's a really tough question.

Tye Harvey: (01:04:13)
I mean, like you said, right? They, you have to be at the right place at the right time. So like in Earl's age and his progression as a coach and his progression as a former athlete, like that timing had to be, had to be what it was. And then, and then you just had a bunch of, I mean, I think there's still people out there like us Grande and you know, the group that we were with like Daniel and you, Kim and Lon, Beau and Grande and Will Jones and Kim Becker and, you know, and Kelly, Chad Har, Jeff Hartwick, like all these people that are in my memory who were magic and, and did amazing things. Derek Miles, I mean all these people, right? You had to have those people, but I think those people probably still exist, but the, the magnetic force and pull that happened to get us all in that one place, in that magic time, I think I, I think it's hard to recreate. I think you, like the universe has to create that whole,

Jake Winder: (01:05:14)
It'll never be the same. And I I I, I will never ever be able to, you know, nothing will ever be the same as Bell Athletics. Like, that was, that was so special. Like, that was just such a special time. And I, I don't know if you guys realized it, you know, like while it was happening, like how special it is, but I mean, looking back on it now is like, like, does that ever happen again? You know, like, who knows? Like, you just don't know. Yeah. Like if something like that would happen again, the things that are fascinating to me, to be honest with you is, you know, we asked these questions you know, my brother and I kind of asked ourselves these questions like, okay, what, like what would we do if we allowed other elite vaulters to train at our facility?

Jake Winder: (01:05:59)
Like what would we do? It was like, well it's in Chicago. Like nobody wants to, you know, like live in the cold and like this and that. And you know, but I like that idea of how it was in Jonesboro. Cause I had never thought about that. Like, it doesn't, it, it takes people that really want to be good and if you like, have to have palm trees in order at your facility, you know, you don't really want to be good. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, so the location kind of, you know, that kind of takes it out of it because Jonesboro was not in a prime location. No. You know, and

Jeremy Scott: (01:06:39)
The time that I was there even before I got there, when I was coming down as a collegiate athlete, there were a lot of athletes that were a lot better than me that had already jumped a lot higher than me that didn't want it. Yeah. They just didn't, that didn't, not, not that they didn't wanna be good, they just didn't want Jonesboro they didn't want to deal with not air conditioning and having to help chop wood and bring in firewood and help with building those hurdles. And I think, I think what that did is it, it kind of cut down on, I mean there, I don't think we had somebody that had a sense of entitlement in the group. And I think that kind of contributed to to the overall atmosphere and kind of the encouragement everybody gave to each other. And I mean, you could sit down and talk with guys that, I mean, you're really competing against each other.

Jeremy Scott: (01:07:37)
There were enough guys there, there's only three spots on every team, but it's like, Ty wasn't kicking my my mark out of the way to gain the edge. You know, like he were watching each other's mid marks and filming, helping each other, filming each other, coaching each other. You know, Hey, can you come pick me up at the airport? And that type of stuff. Cuz it, that wasn't the, an easy thing either is an hour drive to Memphis. And so I, I don't know. I think, I think a lot of the, the difficulties or the, the lack of glamor kinda weeded out, like you said, is kind of its own built-in place filter. And the people that were maybe, maybe the entitlement, I guess kind of got filtered out and I don't know, I don't know how you duplicate that. I mean, it is always, I mean, we had people that wanted to come down there that just didn't necessarily fit and Earl would pull the plug like, no, it's gonna mess up.

Jake Winder: (01:08:37)
Really. Yeah. That was my question. That's up what we got. That was my question is were there times that you guys had to just be like, kind of like, Hey, this person's gotta, you gotta go.

Jeremy Scott: (01:08:47)
Yeah. I'm not gonna say names, but I remember at least two or three times. Really?

Tye Harvey: (01:08:52)
Yeah. So yeah, Earl early on, like Earl would consult with Jeff when, when Jeff was like the main guy there and there wasn't a huge group really. He and Jeff would kind of sit down and talk about potential candidates right. Coming in. Like he'd invite people in to come jump all the time and pretty much anybody could come jump. Right? Right. And he'd help. But, but there was a level of, okay, is this person, does this person fit our, our community? Because really it was more about the person. Okay. So I'm gonna step back. One, one of the things I think was really special about Bell Athletics during that, that area, that era was that there, there was like Earl it was like a, I've never been a part of a commune or anything, like a Kubutz or something , but, but Earl had created this environment where there was no selfishness or very little selfishness, and it was all about sharing and giving and community effort and, and like, everybody pitched in and did stuff, like whatever they could offer they did.

Tye Harvey: (01:09:52)
And, and it was such a like, communal effort, whether and, and that that extended, you know, beyond the pole vault pit, right? We all helped each other get better. We would catch steps for each other, every run down the runway. We would alternate and catch steps and take off steps in film. Like we had our stations and we would just alternate through that because we, we wanted to contribute and get better and learn and be a part of this thing. And that extended into the work life. Like here's how weird this was. Now looking back, I'm like, God, I can't believe that Earl did this. But so like he had his business, he was selling pits and poles and, and he'd have these camps and he'd, and we'd help him with the camps, right? And he'd make money. And like, I lived in the building for a long time and I didn't have a job and I wouldn't make money.

Tye Harvey: (01:10:38)
So I'd go do stuff as much as I could for him during the day. And I'd go paraglide with you, Kim, in my car, like towing me down the road. And, and we did these things for Earl, but, but really he didn't ask anything of us. And then I'd be like, shoot, like I gotta buy some groceries. And I'd go to Earl and I'd be like, Hey, I'm out of money. And he'd be like, here, here's 300 bucks. Go get yourself some food and whatever, like the money and job and like, like we didn't keep track of that stuff. Right? Right. It just, it everybody just contributed and was a part of, you know, our community, our little group. And I think that was one of the really special things is that he was so selfless, self, anti selfish, whatever the word is. Selfless. Selfless. Yeah.

Jake Winder: (01:11:24)
Selfless.

Tye Harvey: (01:11:24)
Yeah. I mean, he was just, he just gave and gave his energy being a big part of that. And you only, you only have so much of that. Right. And he was, it was like magic era because he was at the age and the time in his life and the people that were there, everything just lined up to create this amazing community. And he gave all of his yen and yang. I mean, like, he just, he spent his whole life for us energy on our group. And as it, as it, as it tailed off and that, and that community sort of started dissipating. I I had met Amy, AK and my wife and, and I had moved to Austin and, you know, everybody started like kind of migrating away a little bit and it just sort of slowed down. And then Sammy took, and then Sammy took on Sam and Henry.

Tye Harvey: (01:12:15)
I mean, you know, and, and Drew was the oldest at that point. But like Sam and Henry were, were ankle biters. These kids, they were like little kids. And now they're like a full-blown adults and doing great things and, and have like stepped into that role and kind of kept it going. And and it's great, but I, it'll never be the same because Earl is who he is and, and like, you can't recreate that. But if I had one bit of advice, you know, for anybody trying to recreate that I would say that the community and the giving, the amount of energy and, and like thought that Earl put into it was second to none. And without that it, none of it would've existed. No question.

Jake Winder: (01:12:57)
Yeah. I th I think, I think it's that, and I think that there has to be, it has to be the right place where it properly weeds out the bad people on its own. Mm-Hmm. , you know, the people, the people and the place just kind of like, if you're a bad apple, you just will not want to be there, you know? And that, that's what's so cool. And, and if you get those, you know, the right people together you don't really have to worry about bad people coming in cuz they just, they come in and then they feel like, oh, well I just don't fit in here. These are a bunch of really good people. So Yeah. And then they just get out, you know, and that, that, that was important. That was important. And I think that that was a huge thing is, is you know, making sure you have the right people. So that naturally lends itself to you guys helping me get Earl on the podcast. I've tried and, and it is it's not easy. So any tips on getting your own? You

Jeremy Scott: (01:14:06)
May have to do a may have to do a tandem deal with, with him and Sam and Henry or Yeah, maybe, maybe Jeff or something like that.

Jake Winder: (01:14:15)
Well, I was thinking another

Jeremy Scott: (01:14:16)
Outside pressure on him.

Jake Winder: (01:14:18)
Yeah, right. I I've, I've, I've talked with Sam a little bit and he was like, I'll pitch it to him and he pitched it to him, it didn't work.

Jeremy Scott: (01:14:30)
Drive down there,

Tye Harvey: (01:14:31)
Drive

Jeremy Scott: (01:14:31)
Down there and do it live.

Jake Winder: (01:14:32)
I, I think that that is to be honest with you, I think, you know, I may, I I would really like my brother Luke has been down there a couple times and bolted really well down there. And enjoyed his time. And, and Sam's always, Sam's the only one who I've ever talked with. But he's always been so incredibly kind to me and my family. You know, and I think maybe I go down there and if it happens, it happens. And if not, I still get to make my pilgrimage to Bell Athletics worst case scenario, you know? So, I don't know. I think that that's probably the proper way to do it too, just to you know, for who he is. You know, how do you see Earl on a Zoom call? You know, like,

Tye Harvey: (01:15:20)
Yeah, probably not. Yeah.

Jeremy Scott: (01:15:22)
not very long. Yeah, no, you do it while he is out hitting golf balls on the side. It'd probably be the best way to do it.

Tye Harvey: (01:15:28)
A case, a case of Coors Light and, and, and a nice long evening Bush

Jeremy Scott: (01:15:33)
Light now stairs, bush light. Now Bush,

Tye Harvey: (01:15:35)
He's, because it's cheaper,

Jeremy Scott: (01:15:38)
But he did a double, he said he did a doubleblind taste test and liked Bush light better.

Jake Winder: (01:15:42)
Well, I heard, I heard that they're like the same. Oh, that's key. No, it's Keystone and Coors, right?

Tye Harvey: (01:15:49)
Oh, maybe it's Keystone

Jake Winder: (01:15:50)
And Coors are like the same. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, yeah, so I, I think that that would probably be, you know, something that I'd need to try to figure out how to do there. But anyway. Hey, before we get into this next section, do you care if I go use the restroom real quick?

Tye Harvey: (01:16:06)
No, I'd

Jeremy Scott: (01:16:07)
Like to do the same thing. Yeah. Yep.

Jake Winder: (01:16:08)
Let's do it. All right. Back in business.

Jeremy Scott: (01:16:13)
Hey,

Tye Harvey: (01:16:14)
Grande I, I don't want to to brag too much. I know you're not too far north of me, but it's like 80 degrees out here in Austin today and

Jeremy Scott: (01:16:26)
It is. That sounds terrible. It's February, it's supposed to be 60 degrees colder.

Tye Harvey: (01:16:31)
Yeah, I know, I know you're the snow guy. You like that cold weather, but man, I'm, I love this 80 degree weather. I'll take it all year, all day.

Jeremy Scott: (01:16:41)
The other, the other bad thing about that is that means rougher nights on coal people get out and do stupid stuff when it's warm.

Jake Winder: (01:16:49)
. Yes. No,

Tye Harvey: (01:16:51)
No question.

Jake Winder: (01:16:53)
It all closed up in the in the wintertime. Okay. so let me hold on before we start here. Blah, blah, blah. I'm just looking at my notes here. I mean, there's like a million and a half things that I've wanted to talk to you guys about . So let's go. I have to, I have to like, you know, taper it down to, you know, something that is you know, more manageable. But before we kind of get off of your vaulting careers what poles and grips were you guys on? Just cuz there's a lot of like, crazy like people that love those metrics.

Tye Harvey: (01:17:43)
Yeah. So grande you start first cuz it's most impressive.

Jake Winder: (01:17:47)
. Yeah. You're gonna

Jeremy Scott: (01:17:48)
Be crazy. Well, not really, cuz you're like, how did you only jump so high? The biggest pole I ever used was like a ten six. Oh, it was a, it was a five 30 that guild made for me and I ended up gripping 17 three. It was in a beach, it was in a beach vault, . And like the, it was my biggest pole in the bag. And like that the box just kept sinking. And I still ended up, I think I only jumped like 18, six or seven that day because it's like I kept blowing through. I didn't have any more poles. Oh, my was like, that's like, you could see like, holy cow. Like, I guess a deep box does make a way big difference, so

Jake Winder: (01:18:33)
For sure. For sure. So what was like your regular, like, what was like your regular money pole?

Jeremy Scott: (01:18:38)
Yeah, so, so kind of when I got going kind of the peak of my professional career, I would pretty routinely use like 11 two or 11 4, 5 20. And that's, you know, we had a little different pole set up. So it's like I didn't need the extra long Right. Stuff I'd grip, I, I still grip right there at 16, 11, 17 feet.

Jake Winder: (01:19:04)
Gotcha, gotcha. All right. Ty, what about you?

Tye Harvey: (01:19:08)
I mean, it so at the like peak of my career, I was jumping on five tens mostly gripping just a little over five meters or right at five meters. And the factory flex probably would've been somewhere around like 12, like mid twelves, something like that.

Jake Winder: (01:19:31)
Okay. Okay, got you. Okay. And then that brings me to Essex. Cause Ty, I, Jeremy, I don't know, like with you, were you mainly like pacer?

Jeremy Scott: (01:19:48)
Oh yeah, I I jumped on kind of the, the two big ones. So in college just because of where we were spirit was what we had. And then when I jumped 18 feet, then all of a sudden we had the opportunities to, to switch. So from my, my junior year all the way up until the last year of college, or last year of my professional career, I was on Pacer.

Jake Winder: (01:20:15)
Okay. Okay. Got you. And then Ty, for some reason, I feel like you had like different poles in your hands, like at all, all the time. Is that true?

Tye Harvey: (01:20:28)
Yeah, I did. I, I mean, so I wasn't fortunate enough throughout most of my career to have any sort of poll sponsor. So Earl had a bunch of old poles in the, in the, in the, you know, in the building that I would weed through Jeff Hartwick had like a whole bunch of old, I mean everybody that is there like had scrap poles. And I kind of put together a series of mismatched poles for my first set and including some old spirit poles that Steve had built for Earl way back when. And man, I just had, yeah, huge variety of poles. And then, and then Gil started building poles for me specifically on you know, requested by Earl and that was Earl's Fastback design. And they were, they were really good poles and, but they were heavy to carry cuz a lot of fiberglass at the bottom of the pole.

Tye Harvey: (01:21:22)
But those were really, really good poles. And then they started, they kind of, they, they made a decision that they were gonna, that they were gonna build the fx and I jumped on the, the first series of those FX polls and I just couldn't make 'em work. I, I really struggled. And I mean, they had all kinds of technology and science behind it, but it just, I just couldn't make it work. And I tried for a while, but but ultimately when we had asked them to continue to build the fast back, they, they couldn't, they didn't want to any longer. Right. And it was really hard. Like it's all custom stuff and it's just so time consuming for, for what? For like, and they're giving the polls away to guys like me. Like it didn't make any sense for them. And I understand that business decision. But, but but I was like so dialed into that, that design that I, I really couldn't give it up. It was, you know, and so that's when Bruce kind of, Earl and Bruce got together and started talking about this

Jake Winder: (01:22:24)
For those who whole, for those, for those who don't know, Bruce, Bruce who?

Tye Harvey: (01:22:27)
Caldwell. Bruce Caldwell. Okay. he, he was the founder of Essex and before that he had fiber sport. And I mean, he, Bruce has been in the game forever. He was a pole vault and he, and he built poles for Earl and all the guys back then, like he did, he's he's been everywhere and done everything. The guy, he's really, he'd be an interesting guy to have on the podcast, but, so Bruce Bruce was really kind and gracious enough to be like, Hey, I've just started this company. Let's get these guys the polls they need. And he, and he and I went up to Dallas where he had the factory and I built my first set of poles with Beto and this

Jake Winder: (01:23:04)
Is, and it was awesome. Essex, this is like the origin story of Essex then?

Tye Harvey: (01:23:07)
It is, yeah. Okay,

Jake Winder: (01:23:08)
Gotcha.

Tye Harvey: (01:23:09)
Yep. All right. Yep. And that's where it all started with Bruce. And, and then Earl would help help design those poles and and then Bruce would build them with Beto and then we'd end up with a good series of poles. And I was the first 19 footer on to jump on Essex Pol. I, I jumped 19 feet, a little more than 19 feet on Essex poles. And, and that held up until Sam Kendricks went ahead and just amazed the world with his abilities mm-hmm. , which was interesting because those poles that was when U S T got in the mix and started and started helping Bruce. And that was like the transitional period. And, and then from there, U s T has just with their resources, their engineering and their material science, like, man, it's a, it's at a whole nother level.

Jake Winder: (01:23:59)
Yeah. So that's the thing that I'm curious about because, you know, my dad has run ran camps at North Central College for like the last 30 years and we, we had helped him coach those, you know, every summer. And there was two Essex that we had. This was back in like, I don't know, like 2009, 2010 ish maybe. Yeah. and, and I kids would be like, Hey, you know, I got this one. And I'd be like, ah, just you put that one back, you know, you don't, you don't want, you don't wanna jump on that one, , you know, and, and I, it wasn't, I knew it, Earl had some influence on it, so it wasn't like I was like, you know, they couldn't be good or whatever, but I just like, to me, whenever a kid jumped on it, I was like, that's not what I'm looking for right now. Fast forward to, you know, right now I'm about to call up Essex after this call and give him my credit card for another huge Essex order . So like, excellent.

Jeremy Scott: (01:25:06)
What,

Jake Winder: (01:25:08)
What changed, where, where did it go from? Like the pole that I don't want any of my kids to jump on. I'd just probably just give it away to like having it where I'm funneling a good amount of money into these things now.

Tye Harvey: (01:25:24)
Grande you wanna start? Yeah.

Jeremy Scott: (01:25:26)
Yeah. So I guess in 2015, this is, Bruce had sold a company to, I don't know when he sold it, was it 14 or 15? Probably 14.

Tye Harvey: (01:25:36)
Somewhere right around

Jeremy Scott: (01:25:37)
There. Sold a company to U S T and they, they were kind of going off the way that they had been doing things with Bruce and kind of put in their own inputs. And I very distinctly remember the phone call cuz this was, you know, I was kind of trying to ramp up for another Olympic team in 2015 and 2016 and John Reig called and, and actually I think maybe you called me first and said to be, be aware that they may be calling. And I was like, you know, I just, I I don't really, I don't want to change anything. I feel like everything's going good. I had my set of fast back polls and was confident I'd, I'd been jumping well and had been coming back. I had a knee injury that I felt like I was coming back from and I just didn't wanna mess anything up.

Jeremy Scott: (01:26:32)
And so I kind of was real short on the phone and thankfully Don called me back again, I don't know, less than a week later and said, Hey, this is, you know, sorry to bug you again. This is, let me tell you kind of what we're looking for and, and we'll start off with what happened with golf. And he had said that they had developed with their golf shafts kind of the theoretical best possible golf shaft you could, like the math couldn't get better, the materials couldn't get better. It was as good as it could be in the simulator and mathematically, but they put it in the player's hands and they hated it. And, hold on

Jake Winder: (01:27:17)
One, one second. One second, Jeremy. So people are probably confused that don't know what u t

Jeremy Scott: (01:27:22)
Is u Yes. US team, me is the golf chef company and they ended up buying the pole company kind of based on, you know, Bruce saw that they had stuff that normal pole companies can't buy as far as materials and resources. Gotcha.

Jeremy Scott: (01:27:39)
So Don is the special projects manager, very, very smart engineer. And anyway, so he was talking about the golf, golf clubs and they ended up saying, okay, like, what, what can we do? And all the players would talk about was feel, I want it to feel like this here, I want it to feel at release here. You know, the, a bunch of golf terms that I don't know, but Right. Kind of like some of the stuff that, like when we're talking about pole vault poles, like I want it to, you know, feel soft, like bend early, bend easy. Right? Then I wanna feel, feel that scoop and kind of get like, a lot of it was like, huh. Yeah. That kinda, yeah. I used some of those same words too, talking about pole

Jake Winder: (01:28:21)
Vault. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Scott: (01:28:22)
And so anyway, he said he like, you know, we, we were like, okay, we kind of willing to design something off of feel kind of in the back of our mind saying, you know what, we'll do it just to kind of appease them, but we know that we've got the best thing you can do, like with formulas and mathematics and kind of some of the same stuff that I remember hearing from, from other poll companies. Like, Nope, this is as good as it gets. This is what our testing says this is, this is it. Right. And anyway, so he, with the, he put those shafts in the players' hands and sure enough, like the ball's going further, they love it, it's going straighter. They like, and you start getting players to switch over to the shafts and he goes, Hey, I, you know, I think we're going down the same road with our pole vault poles.

Jeremy Scott: (01:29:13)
It's like, we know what we want 'em to be, but what, what do we need to do for feel like, what do you jumpers want to feel? How do they want things to go? And so it's like when he, when he said that, or when he asked me that, I was like, oh my gosh, this is, this is what we've been wanting companies to ask us as athletes. Like, wow, what do we wanna have in our pool vault poles? And then you kind of get a little more in depth, like, you know, we've got this many engineers on step, we've got structural engineers, we've got material engineers, we've got all of this material. You know, they've already discovered that not all carbon's good for pole vault poles, not all fiberglass is good for pole vault poles and you gotta make things match. And I was like, oh my gosh.

Jeremy Scott: (01:29:54)
It's like music to my ears, . That's so cool. Like, this is what we've been wanting people to, to ask us and put into pole vault poles. And so like when we had that conversation, I was like, absolutely. Like this is something that I can get behind it and I want to be a part of. And I think, you know, everything I know about pole vault poles is from Earl and it's like, this is something that we can kind of improve on this fast bag design, take the same principles, but improve it with materials. And Tide already mentioned that they're so heavy. You know, we can cut down carry weight, we can make 'em stronger, we can reinforce things, we can make 'em more consistent because of the, the manufacturing. We also make aero shafts or Easton, the carbon fiber aero shafts and like those things that tolerances go out to like eight decimal points as far as like how precise they have to be. So if you can do that with aero shafts, like pole vault poles should be easy.

Jake Winder: (01:30:52)
Right.

Jeremy Scott: (01:30:54)
And so like you get all of these things that they're good at and they're actually starting to ask athletes like, what do you want in a pole vault pole? You know, like, holy cow, this could be, this could be something special. And you know, I I went with him for a couple of years and then we finally convinced Ty to, to jump in. And so then when, when we got together, it's like, it just seemed like things really, especially now in the, the last couple of years you kind of see the fruits of our labor from those first few years.

Jake Winder: (01:31:26)
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And so why, why did they choose Ty? I'll, I'll ask you, why did they choose you two? Like, it, it was just because you had already done that fast back poll or, or you were involved with that?

Tye Harvey: (01:31:44)
So the, the guy really at, at the core of the success of Essex as Don, I mean, I don't think he gets enough. He's a, he's a really intelligent engineer as Grande said. But, but he's also, he's listened, I think he's listened to every single one of your podcasts like four times.

Jake Winder: (01:32:03)
He, he called me the other day and, and and we, and I was like, you know, I've never met him before. And we were on the phone for an hour and a half. I was in the Walmart parking lot waiting to go into Walmart,

Tye Harvey: (01:32:14)
. Yeah,

Jake Winder: (01:32:14)
Yeah. We talked for an hour and a half. He was such a cool guy and just you could tell that he was very just intrigued with it all. You know, he has no pole vaulting experience, no pole vaulting background, but just very intrigued and just fascinated and and curious about about it. And yeah. So anyway, keep going.

Tye Harvey: (01:32:38)
So, so I was, at the time when I met Don, so I had, I had jumped 19 feet plus on the, and on the Essex poles. And Bruce was, would tell Don about, you know, who, who to talk to and like, who, what, what's up with Essex? And, and I remember I got a phone, so I was a paramedic in, in the city of Austin for a while, and then I had just left my paramedic job and I was selling, I was a sales guy for paramedic software like what they call E H r, electronic Health Records. Grande knows all about those and probably hates them. And so , I was, I was selling software now at that moment, and I was up in Dallas making visits to fire departments. And I get this call from Don Merrigan, he's like, Hey, I'm Don and let, I wanna meet you and talk a little bit about pole vault poles.

Tye Harvey: (01:33:29)
I'm, I work at Essex and whatnot. And so I remember I sat down at lunch with him and had a beer and, and we started talking about, and he's like, what's the most important things? And all he wanted to know was like, how he could do better at the, at at manufacturing and, and what, what were important things. And I said, well, first of all, you gotta turn a pole around in like two days. You gotta get polls out the door in like two days. Right, right. And he like laughed. He's like, oh my God, you're not serious. And I'm like, no, I'm serious. Like, you have to do that. And, and so like that, that has been the goal. We're still not there, but we're, we're really getting close, Lee. Yeah. I, Nero has done an amazing job at like refining production and really taking ownership and making it work. And each year we get better and better. And even with the gr like the amount of growth that Essex has seen over the last, like five years or four years is, I don't know how you could expect to keep up with that, like year over year kind of growth.

Jake Winder: (01:34:24)
Yeah. Yeah. You guys are putting a lot. I mean, I talk with Brian Monk a lot and he, and it's, it's really cool to watch the, the growth and to hear about it. But I mean, you know, you get more and more clubs and more and more people involved with it, that means more and more orders and that means more and more, you know, issues trying to get 'em out and things like that. It's gonna be hard. Yeah. You know? Yeah. But it is what it is. And yeah, it's just cool to watch.

Tye Harvey: (01:34:57)
We're the team is up for the task. I mean, like I said, Lee has, as you know, really established himself as like a, a leader and, and a person who wants to make it all happen. And he, he bends over backwards all the time. Everybody in the back. And Don is constantly involved at the high level. And when we meet him in the minutia, he's there. And it's really a fun team. Like another kind of magic moment in time, I think. And, and so that day that I met Don, he's like, Hey, we're looking for a sales guy to help sell these Essex poles. Would you be interested? I'm like, I can't, but I know this guy, his name is Grande, Jeremy Scott, you should give him a call. And that's when that happened. And Grand, it was just perfect timing. Like grande again. He couldn't do it right away, but eventually he found himself there. And then with his knowledge and abilities, like, then you saw this like great momentous push and that's, that's really when the magic started to happen was when Grande showed up.

Jake Winder: (01:35:55)
So who sold Kendricks, the first Essex

Tye Harvey: (01:36:00)
Bruce,

Jeremy Scott: (01:36:01)
It sounds actually Bruce

Tye Harvey: (01:36:02)
Beto. Bruce Beto and Bruce went to his house and at the time he was having trouble with Paul's breaking not, not Essex poles. And so they went and, and Marni, his mom said, the most important thing for me is that my son doesn't get hurt. Can you build a pole that won't break? You know, that's how the story goes. And, and yeah. From there. Yeah. That,

Jake Winder: (01:36:23)
That's right. Well, I think that's, that's like the big thing is that I talked with Don about it is like, you know, the ability to be able to, to gain the trust in carbon fiber, you know, like of, of the public and, and stuff like that. And so like that's been something that if you pick up an Essex pole, it like, it feels very like, robust, you know, like it feels hardy. Like it's not heavy, obviously. And the diameters really small , you know, which are, are two good things, but it doesn't feel you know, brittle or frail, you know, like do you guys have any idea like how, like, how it's, how they're trying to get rid of the stigma of carbon?

Jeremy Scott: (01:37:14)
Yeah,

Tye Harvey: (01:37:14)
I mean, I think,

Jeremy Scott: (01:37:15)
Yeah, so I'll start tile, speak more to it. He's got more of the engineering brain, I think. But I mean it, one of the things that I learned early on, it's, you know, I'd mentioned it a little bit like not all, not all carbon's good for pole vault. Like these, the materials have different stiffness and stretch properties and deformation properties. And, and then on top of that, they've all got different resins impregnated in. So like you have to have the right fibers with the right resins. And then you never use just all, all fiberglass. You gotta, or sorry, you never use all carbon, you gotta add in fiberglass. And just because you're adding fiberglass, that doesn't mean that's gonna work. You've gotta have the right type of fiberglass with the type, you know, similar bending properties so you don't get delamination and shearing and, and it's gotta have the right type of resin.

Jeremy Scott: (01:38:09)
And so all of that stuff is so far, you know, beyond, and that's why I'm so happy we have the engineering team and the materials team that we do, because it's of the, how many materials do we have tie 85, 95 different types of materials that we use in all of our different businesses. Wow. You know, not of, not all of 'em are good for pole vault poles. Not all of 'em are good for golf shafts. Not all are good for you gotta take the specific material properties, the resin properties, the stretch, the deformation characteristics, all these things are so far beyond what you would normally think about. Like, okay, it's a pole vault pole, but you gotta make 'em all work together. And then I know that we do studies on our poles to make sure that, you know, our, our layers are laminating. We're not getting porosity, we're making sure that the resins are, are bonding together to make it really one solid layer.

Jeremy Scott: (01:39:00)
So I think it's, you know, the research and development, it's 100% having the right team. We keep coming back to this. It's always about the right people, right? You gotta have the right team with the right specialties and you gotta all work together, right? And so I think that's what we've been able to do. Or, you know, this is what we want to feel in our pole vault poles. Okay, let's take it to the materials guys. We've got, you know, okay, we can handle this. This is the material that needs to be in this part of the pole. And you put that to the structural engineers and they make it all happen. So,

Jake Winder: (01:39:31)
So during the development of these poles, who, who was, were you guys testing these or like

Jeremy Scott: (01:39:39)
I was, I was the test pilot for a lot of it. really, at least in the bigger poles. Yeah.

Tye Harvey: (01:39:44)
Yep. Yeah. What

Jeremy Scott: (01:39:44)
Was your I I've got a set of poles that's pretty freaking cool with the different things that go on inside of 'em, but we set 'em, Grande was on the best design.

Tye Harvey: (01:39:53)
Yeah. Grande was the next level tester. I was the original tester and oh my that, that was like when Bruce was building poles with Beto and, you know, doing their absolute best with really, really limited resources. And so I, I had jumped on those and, you know, they were pretty good poles. Consistency was an issue. Like, you know, I, I'd have one or two really good polls that I loved and then kind of like the consistency. So that was a big thing, was consistency. And that, that comes down to having resources to buy a, a whole bunch of mandrels, for example, and material. So you have consistency among, you know, your suppliers and all that. And, and then, and then the engineering. And like, then, then that whole next level grande got to test and they took it, they took it. It was pretty fun. I think that progression. Mm-Hmm.

Jake Winder: (01:40:43)
. So Ty, you were, you were a part of, you were a big part of like kind of the Bruce Caldwell and I'm sorry, who was the other person? A

Tye Harvey: (01:40:53)
Beto

Jeremy Scott: (01:40:53)
The engineer. Atta the time was Beto. Yeah,

Jake Winder: (01:40:56)
Beto. So you were, you were kind of like part of that, and then once this u s T thing happened, then Grande you came on, kind of, is that timeline correct?

Jeremy Scott: (01:41:08)
Yeah, we, I don't, Ty you were, you were not necessarily officially with the company, right? You're just an athlete sponsor, but did did some side test pilot work it sounds like.

Jake Winder: (01:41:21)
I guess that's what I mean. Yeah.

Jeremy Scott: (01:41:22)
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then, and then he'd re I don't, he'd been away from pole vault for quite a few years mm-hmm. until, and I was still, I mean, I was kinda at the end of my competitive career when they contacted me in, in two, at the end of the 2015 season.

Jake Winder: (01:41:43)
Right. Yeah. That is that is really crazy to see that evolution because it really has turned into something, you know, that if you'd asked me 10, 12 years ago, you know, like whenever I had those two at, at the pole vault camp, I'd be like, there's not a chance in this world. mm-hmm. , you know? Yeah. And, and now it, it's really, really crazy to see how, how far it's come. So in the early days whenever you were trying to onboard people to these new poles, like what was your pitch?

Jeremy Scott: (01:42:24)
Grand so early on? Yeah. Early on it was, you know, the kind of, and not too dissimilar from what I told you is that, you know, these are poles that are made kind of by pole vaulters. Like this is, we made 'em with what we know is important. We want him to be durable, we want him to have certain bend characteristics. And really overall we want it to be consistent. I mean, tide mentioned that, you know, he had a couple of favorite poles and I think everybody has that. And it took me, didn't take me too long working with Earl and working those camps. Like he'd flex Poles and they wouldn't be the same, even though the labels were the same. And you know, you'd, every kid, it's like you get three or four kids in a camp that were like, oh, like I, I do really well and then I get to this one poll and Right.

Jeremy Scott: (01:43:12)
I can't use it. I'm like, but even though the numbers say it's, it should be the next one, just things change. And you know, I know now it could be a mandrel size, it could just be construction size cuz it's easy to kind of cut corners for manufacturing purposes. Right. and so that was one thing that we emphasize is we want 'em to feel the same from the day you start. If you're, you know, in sixth grade picking up a pole for the first time, you can stay on our pole and it's gonna feel the same every single step of the way. And having the engineering team and the resources to get like the mandrels like Tide said, and making sure you've got consistent jumps, I think we've done pretty good at, at having minimal jumps or gaps with the way our poles work. And so, so that's kind of how we, we went at it. And then the other thing, you know, we knew that it's gonna be hard to get a guy that's jumping 19 feet, 19 and half feet to make a change. And so we

Jake Winder: (01:44:13)
Were right.

Jeremy Scott: (01:44:14)
We're like, let's get it to the guys that, you know, if we can get 'em early, they're, they're not gonna want to change anything else. Cuz we know they're the lightest, we know they're the easiest to carry. We know they're the smallest you can, you get them kind of on our poles and then they, some go someplace else and have to carry a spirit pole or an old fiberglass pole. And , we knew they were gonna, they're gonna eat it. And so that's kind of the other thing. We, we wanted to, to get good coaches that understood pole vault with clubs with young kids and, and and I think it's worked out. It's, it's in the process of working out. Cause now, now we got guys that are at that top level that we got 'em early and, and knew they weren't gonna want to change cuz we felt we had the best product on the market.

Jake Winder: (01:45:04)
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's definitely come up quite a bit. And you know, you made made me a believer, it's, I I actually, whenever I was first talking with Brian about it, like, I had not jumped in a long time, maybe like six years, something like that, . And I was like, doggone it man. I, you know, he was like, man, they're really good polls, blah, blah, blah. He wasn't like, try being pushy or anything mm-hmm. I forget why we had gotten on the phone. Maybe we were talking about the podcast or something. And, and and he was like, and I was like, you know, I wish I could have just jumped on him. Like, I just, you know, just so then, and, and he was like, Hey man, I can send you something out. And I and I was like, for real? And he was like, yeah. I was like, all right, let's do it. So he sent him out. Yeah. And because I, it's gonna be hard as I get older, you know, in my, in my career you know, I, I want to be able to recommend something that I've felt, you know what I'm saying? Mm-Hmm. because it's, it's hard to Yeah. To be like, yeah, that's the best pole. Yeah. And it's like, how do you know? Yeah. Like , you know, like

Jeremy Scott: (01:46:16)
Yeah. And, and that was, I think, something good too. Early on, especially early on we had a pretty long leash and a pretty good budget to send people, polls to try kinda risk free. Right. You know, give, you know, gimme your, gimme your kids, your best kids, gimme a range. We'll send you, we'll send you 10 polls that you know, 10 of your best athletes can use. And if you don't like 'em, no, no sweat, we'll we'll pay you to ship 'em back. Right. And, and we knew, we knew that it was from our end pretty low risk because we, we felt pretty strongly they were gonna like

Jake Winder: (01:46:48)
Them. Yeah. That's the thing is that if you're confident in the product, then it's like, you know, it's, it is pretty low risk. So what, what Ty what is your involvement now? Like currently with Yep. So with sx, so

Tye Harvey: (01:47:02)
When, well, so when Grande was full, full on sales with Essex he started school and I kind of, I stepped in and we, and he, and I worked together for a, a few years there and made some magic happen. But then, but then when he started school, he had to step back a little bit. So, so I kind of stepped up my time commitments to Essex and, and we really, you know, kind of running, running the sales side of things. And then, and then and then Moonshine and Mike Vanny Brian Moonshine, I call him moonshine. And we just kind of like fill in, fill in our, our niches, like our little roles, our ga we like, I don't know, we just fit well together and, and kind of work, work our strengths into each other's weaknesses. You know, like we just, we just fit well together.

Tye Harvey: (01:47:56)
And Brian, Brian has been a, a massive, massive, I think help in, in what he brings to the table. And yeah. You know Grande still contributes, even though he is in medical school and doing the things that he's doing as a doctor now, he's still contr whenever we need some high level information or like, you know, Hey, how should we approach this? We call Grande. He's like the doctor. You go to the doctor for the problem, right? And he fixes the problem, . And and I, and I mostly now I've kind of more or less backed out of a lot of the day-to-day sta sales stuff that Brian does and Mike does, and I'm, and I'm, I'm more help the elite athletes. So I, I mainly, I'm mainly just helping the elites and, and then I answer a lot of the emails still, and, and I do help some of the sales, you know, people will call me and u usually they're like, troubleshoot.

Tye Harvey: (01:48:54)
So like a dealer I'll call and say, ah, my, you know, my my shipment's lost in somewhere. I can't find it. And we'll help track it down. Yeah. There's shipping and logistics is like just a nightmare. And it's, it's becoming more and more challenging with pole vaulting, like internationally, like rent. So now we have this great team, you know, like Lars and Renz. Don and I flew over to Europe and met with a bunch of folks and, and landed on Lars and Renz to run Essex Europe. And that's been a amazing, you know, addition to the team. And they're, they're doing, they're starting to kill it. It's going to really neat. It's gonna be neat to see how they open up Europe and introduce them to Essex. Right? And then, like Hiro Hiroshi over in, in Japan has done, like, he, he runs, he found, and it's amazing. Like that kid, he's unbelievable. And he has a team, he's like developed a team and is working with our U S T Japan division to bring polls to Asia. And it's just like, wow, this, this team is just like working really well together. And, and yeah. It's, it's been a fun little ride, but mo mostly I'm just doing elite stuff and then some emails and like troubleshooting.

Jake Winder: (01:50:05)
Right, right. Where do you guys see Essex in the next, you know, 10 years you think? Do you still see yourselves? So the one thing that I, one of the things that I like about Essex is they make pole vaulting poles. That's what they do, is they make pole vault poles . That's right. You know, and it's just, and, and that is one thing that I, I enjoy about that is, is just the, you know, the focus on that, you know, the focus on, on, you know, the product, the, just the singular pole, vaulting pole product, basically. And then I also enjoy that whenever I'm talking with people, like I'm talking with Brian Mancha, who I vaulted with, you know, like after college and, and competed against. And then, you know, I talk with, you know, Jeremy Scott and Ty Harvey, and like, these are all like kind of household names in the pole vault world. And I enjoy that. So I, I wa I wonder though, wh how does the future of Essex look? Do you guys stay, you know, it's, it's hard to predict, but I just am curious about where the direction you guys are going. Yes,

Tye Harvey: (01:51:31)
Yes. So I'll, I'll start with that one. So the, the relationships that we've developed in the partnerships with, like Richie, for example, Steven Griffith, Richie really speak to I think our future. Like he does, he does pits exceptionally well. They're so Richie pits so good. We've got one. They're so good. Yeah. And they're durable and they, they're just, they're great landing systems. And so, like, he does that, like that's what he does, right. And he does it really well. And, and it doesn't make a sense for us to start importing pits or like building pits or anything. Like that's a whole nother model and stuff. And we're, we're focused on, like, one of the facts that blew my mind when Don was introducing me to the new U S T SX was like, yeah, we, we buy like a 40 foot container full of carbon every month, and it goes to our, you know, carbon, like that's football fields of carbon, right?

Tye Harvey: (01:52:33)
Yeah. Like, like crazy amount. And like we, we work in composites and we, and we do fiberglass and carbon fiber composite material, and that's what we do. Like, to me, like you do that and you do it well. And that's, and that's like the focus, when you start getting spread thin, it becomes more, more of a challenge. And so that's the model. And I think that's what I see continuing into the future is partnering with people who do their thing really well, right. And, and letting them do that thing. And then we're gonna keep doing our thing and let's work together to, to, you know, like Richie, you know, Steven will send out a pit, a kit to a school and he'll include, you know, polls, Essex polls with it, exclusively Essex polls, cuz he really loves that we're doing Essex polls and that's it. That's all we do.

Jake Winder: (01:53:22)
Right, right. Jeremy, what do you think?

Jeremy Scott: (01:53:26)
I, I was gonna use that reference too. That's, that's kind of been the thing is, I mean, I think we're gonna keep you know, continuing to grow. Like, like Ty said, that leaves really kind of, we're constantly trying to evolve our necessarily evolve, but make, make our manufacturing more efficient. We built and added ovens I feel like, almost every year for the last three or four years. And, and you know, we still are, I feel like we've got a good design, but that doesn't mean we can't continue to look at new materials and, and better ways of doing things while keeping the basic principles of, of what we want it to feel like. And keeping things consistent and having something that you can, can build off that, that was kind of one of the hard parts early on is, you know, we change flex systems and getting things to all, like, what do we have and how do we marry these different lines of, of poles?

Jeremy Scott: (01:54:22)
And so I think, I think kind of improving manufacturing to where we're a little more efficient and, and continuing to grow. But I think at the heart of it, we're always gonna be pole vaulters that are trying to get the best equipment out and, you know, we wanna make an impact, right? I mean, there's only so many ways you can do that in pole vault. So I, I think, at least for mine, I, I, I can't speak for tie, but we've talked about this before personally that like this is a great way for us to help other people get better equipment, more consistent poles that, and kind of pay back a sport that we've done that's done so much for us both personally and professionally.

Jake Winder: (01:55:05)
Right, right. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, you guys are doing an incredible job. Is there anything else that you guys wanted to chat about or cover before we get off here?

Tye Harvey: (01:55:18)
Yeah, I'd like to,

Jake Winder: (01:55:21)
Uhoh keeps cutting that

Jeremy Scott: (01:55:25)
Up

Jake Winder: (01:55:25)
A little bit. There we go. There we go. You're good now.

Tye Harvey: (01:55:26)
Okay. Maybe it's, I was fiddling with my little, my little plug connector for my headset . Is that better? Can you hear me

Jake Winder: (01:55:33)
Now? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tye Harvey: (01:55:34)
So I wanna say something about a good friend who just passed and meant a lot to the pole vault community. Tim Lo, Tim Lowinger and I, I have very fond memories of, of of meeting Tim and him just inviting me into, into the German mix and being a, such a, like a big part of that community over there. So many good memories. And he always had just this huge smile and this just bigger than life kind of aura about him. And the, and everybody looked up to him in Germany. I mean, of course they had their little things right, and like we all do, but, but ultimately such great respect for that guy. And huge loss makes me very sad. And you know, I, I think about all of the people that are really close to him over there suffering and through his loss. And so just yeah, shout out, shout out to, to Tim and and what he's meant to the community.

Jake Winder: (01:56:46)
Yeah, I I had posted something on Instagram about I had actually reached out to him maybe a couple years ago to see if he, if I could get him, you know, if he wanted to talk on the podcast or whatever and, and, and have that and that was one of the people that I was really, you know, hoping that I would be able to talk to just cuz I grew up watching him and, and all those things. And that was yeah, that's, it's just really sad, you know, and I, forgive me, but what, what happened, like, was, did he have like cancer or something or? Yeah,

Jeremy Scott: (01:57:26)
He had a leukemia, I believe. Leukemia or lymphoma, okay. Blood cancer. Ugh.

Tye Harvey: (01:57:33)
But, and I, I, I understand that he was actually doing pretty well more recently, but then he developed like a, a lung infection. Ugh. And yeah, that was what got him. I think.

Jake Winder: (01:57:45)
That's

Jeremy Scott: (01:57:46)
Terrible. Yeah, I mean, he just to, I mean, I didn't get to compete or, or probably didn't know him as well as Ty did, but I think that kinda, I'll give you one story about him. I mean, I, I went over there, I was still pretty early on. This is only maybe my second or third time competing in Europe. And my polls got lost. And we made a few calls and he had an extra set of poles. His agent got ahold of him, he was already on the way to this meet that we were competing at. And he said, I'll go back and get mine. So he turned around, went and got 'em from at that point, I think it was still Lever cooing. He may have been down in Munich by that point, but he turned around and went and got him and then came and like brought him to the meat for me and let me use him for the rest of my trip there. And I was trying to figure out a way to, to get him at the end of my trip and he's like, no, I'll come and get him. And, and then he gave me a ride to the airport, like, oh my

Jake Winder: (01:58:45)
Gosh,

Jeremy Scott: (01:58:46)
Like he's at this point, you know, six meter man world champion, and I'm just, just starting to break in on some of the circuit stuff. And like, that's how he was treating me. And just always, like Ty said, always a big smile and just a big personality and just hilarious a hilarious guy, but, but would go out of his way literally for you to, to kind of, I mean, he knew how hard we had it with the travel and I mean, this was, he left a big impression on me, let's put it that way, early on in my professional career.

Jake Winder: (01:59:23)
Yeah. A lot of people it sounds like you know, that's, that's just so sad. You know, you just, I don't know those, it is sad stuff happens, you know, in this world and, and it's it's just hard. You know, you have somebody that was a six meter pole vault and then, you know, dies young like that. It's like you're at the peak of what a human can do and then, you know, that happens. It's just really sad. But yeah. So anyway, yeah. Yeah. rest in peace Tim Lowinger and, and yeah, he'll, he, he won't ever be forgotten. He's on that six meter list, so I mean, that's, yeah, that's a really good thing to be on, man. Yeah. That's a really good thing to be on. But yeah. Anyway is there, is there anything else that you guys wanted to, to talk about before we got off here?

Tye Harvey: (02:00:26)
Man, I, I just, I would love to, I this podcast has got me thinking about all the people

Jake Winder: (02:00:34)


Tye Harvey: (02:00:34)
In my life that have, you know, touched me in some way. Yeah. And like, I remember like Karen Locke taking a chance on me as her first pole vault. She was my manager, my my manager. And like, I remember her like taking like just a huge step into the unknown with me. And it turned out great. And she still manages Pole vaulters the best in the world, and she does Oh yeah. An amazing job. And, and then Mark Gonberg like, man, and like Lars introducing me to his coach at the time who became my manager for a minute, and like the whole, everybody that's, and then like, the most important thing in my whole track career that happened is, is I met my wife, you know, it's like, holy cow. Like I have kids and a wife because of track and field in pole vault. And like, that's, that's the most important thing that's ever happened to me. And it's because track led us to that moment at World Championships where we sh she pinched my butt in an interview and then like, and that like lit the fire, right? Like , Kelly, Kelly Subtle was a part of that. Like, she's like, yeah, she was egging my wife once, so probably she wouldn't have done it had it not been for Kelly. But man, it's just like my whole life has been enriched.

Jake Winder: (02:01:52)
It's really cool. I, you know, to be honest with you, I feel very, very fortunate being in the position that I'm in. We have our facility the Rise Pole Vault Training Center, and, and we work with so many kids. And I was talking with somebody the other day about how I feel so fortunate because they'll be a kid that comes in like hey, I'm a senior. Somebody told me that I should pull a vault, you know, like, and it's like you know, is there, you think, you know, I should do this? And then we take 'em and then like six months later they're getting like a division one scholarship offers, and it's just like their, their, their path through life was going this way and then all of a sudden, boom just gets kicked off this way. And it's like, that just completely changed everything for you, you know, like six months ago you didn't even know what the pullout was, and then now you have this thing that you've been introduced to, and now your life is going to go off in a whole different way.

Jake Winder: (02:03:01)
And the coolest part is whenever you get a kid that, you know, you can just kind of tell didn't have as much going for him, you know? And then it's like, it's just so cool. It is, it is really wild when you look back on, you know, both, both, you guys can look back on your lives and I can look back on my life and just be like, wow, like pole vaulting legitimately is my livelihood right now. My job right now is to try and make a really cool pole vaulting experience for a bunch of kids, you know, and, and to put out these podcasts and to, you know, do all those sorts of things. And it is really wild how the little sport of, of pole vaulting has, has done so much for in everybody's lives, you know? And I just believe in it a lot.

Jake Winder: (02:03:54)
You know, I just believe in it. Like, it's like everybody that I talk to and I say what I do for my living, they're like, oh, you know, the, the initial thought is just like, that is the dumbest this kid. He must be freaking stupid. And I don't know, I think that's part of the chip that's always been on my shoulder though. Like, I'm not trying to say this like, to be cocky or anything, but like, I could have been a football player. I could have been a basketball player. I could have been anything that I wanted to be, and I probably would've been pretty good at it, but I chose pole vaulting, you know, and every time that I would tell somebody, like somebody, well, I, I do this, you know, they'd be like, oh, you don't play football or you don't play basketball, you know, it's like, eh, well, it is what it is.

Jake Winder: (02:04:45)
You know, we, you know, always getting the short end of the stick on who gets field house time and you know, all of these things. And, and I'm still coming up against, you know, whenever we went to go put our bid in to lease this property, you know, you know what's coming because they're gonna ask you what you're doing, , I want, I wanna start a pole vaulting gym here. They're like, you can't make, you can't make enough money to do that. You can't make enough money to pay for this rent. I'm like, gimme a freaking chance, man. Gimme a freaking chance. And I'll show you, I'll show you what we can do. You know, I'll show you what this community can do because what you guys are talking about, what Ty was talking about and is, is a community that might be stronger than some of those other sports. Those other sports might have popularity, but I don't know if they have the same community. Like our community's really strong. You know? That's, and that's what what's so powerful about it.

Tye Harvey: (02:05:46)
You, you're affecting thousands of kids' lives in a very profound way, Jake, with what you're, you know, with what's going on. And like, that's, that is a, like, what could more, could you ask for in life than to have an impact? And we're making massive impacts on these kids' lives, you know, and, and a shout out to our elite athletes like Sam Kendricks, what, what sport, what, what professional sport in this world has Olympic medalists, American record holders, those the best in the world, accessible Mando, he's accessible. Like holy. Right? Where else is that gonna happen? Right? And like, I know, and it takes, it takes Pole vaulters to be with other pole vaulters to be successful. It's not a sport you can just do, you know, you, you ha it takes a village, right? And like, it's a dangerous thing. It can be risky. So like, there's that element of like, Hey, I need somebody's help to catch my steps so I don't monkey roll or end up on my head like , right? The, the community has to, has to, has to help each other. And it's like this communal thing. And man, it's like our elite athletes are incredible. Like Sam Kendricks, he does so much for the sport and yeah. Chris Nielsen and, you know, I mean, I, the list is, it's unbelievable. We're, we're so fortunate at Essex also to have this incredible group of elite athletes. Yeah. Really now.

Jake Winder: (02:07:08)
Incredible

Tye Harvey: (02:07:08)
Group. Like Katie Naja, oh my God, these athletes are just killing it. And they're so accessible and doing things for the community, and it's like, just to pay it forward is, is is immense. And it's, it's pretty neat to be a part of all that.

Jake Winder: (02:07:23)
It is absolutely outstanding. Gentlemen, it's been a really awesome, awesome time. Is there anywhere that Ty, I do follow you on Instagram and I love watching your little arc, your architectural videos. I really do. I love whenever a new Ty Harvey build gets posted up on

Jeremy Scott: (02:07:45)
He's awesome, isn't he? Yeah.

Jake Winder: (02:07:47)
Thanks. It's crazy. It's so cool. Yeah. So if you're interested in that what, what is that Instagram handle?

Tye Harvey: (02:07:54)
Ty Harvey Enterprises,

Jake Winder: (02:07:56)
Ty Harvey Enterprises, and then Jeremy is there, do you do the social media thing or do you I

Jeremy Scott: (02:08:03)
Do a little bit. I think it's more for watching my wife post post pictures of my own kids .

Jake Winder: (02:08:10)
Right.

Jeremy Scott: (02:08:11)
But El Grande USA is my is my Instagram.

Jake Winder: (02:08:16)
Awesome. Awesome. Well thank you guys so much. I, I know this was a big chunk of your day and I really enjoyed the conversation and yeah. So thank you guys for Thank you for coming on.

Jeremy Scott: (02:08:29)
Thank you for having us on. Absolutely.

Jake Winder: (02:08:32)
Super

Tye Harvey: (02:08:32)
Fun to take, to take those memories and kind of bring them forward. You know, they're, they were getting dusty back there a little bit, so , it was fun. Really fun. Thank you very much.

Jake Winder: (02:08:41)
Absolutely. And this is the one more jump podcast. See you guys later.