The bar was set at 13 feet, 8 inches.

Lydia Townsend had never cleared that height in her life.

The Marsh Valley senior stood at the back of the runway at the Arcadia Invitational — one of the most prestigious high school track meets in the country, held Saturday April 11 in Arcadia, Calif. — smiled, and told herself she was going to clear it on the first attempt.

“Everything just goes dark. I can’t hear anything," Townsend said. "I can see the box, and then I’m just going down the runway.”

She screamed on the way down before she even landed.

“When you have that feeling with the higher bars,” she said, “there’s no feeling better.”

She wasn’t wrong.

The jump of 13-8 was not only a personal record, but the best girls high school mark in the nation — three inches clear of Ohio’s Annie McCracken, a three-time All-American signed to Indiana. It is also tied for eighth all-time in the meet’s 58-year history, alongside former Stanford All-American Kaitlyn Merritt.

The win made Townsend only the third Idaho athlete and the first girl in at least 11 years to claim a title at Arcadia. The BYU signee joins Highland’s Spencer Van Orden, who won the 110-meter hurdles just last year, and Rocky Mountain alum Michael Slagowski, the 800 champion back in 2015.

“You can’t be mad about being number one in the nation,” Townsend said.

Especially for someone who almost quit.

Her father and Marsh Valley pole vaulting coach, Eli Townsend, still has the video on his phone.

It’s of Lydia’s first pole vault during the summer of her eighth-grade year. It took place in the backyard of the family’s Inkom home, next to the horse arena, with a makeshift runway quickly thrown together. You can hear Eli in the background, barely containing himself.

“First day,” he narrates on the video, “and she’s already swinging up and turning.”

Three years later, she was a five-time state champion — including in the pole vault — with the second-best mark in the state at 12-3 — nearly four feet higher than her first-ever high school jump — and an All-American to her name.

“Every time I look back at that video, I’m amazed at the promise she showed pretty much on day one,” Eli said. “She was able to swing up and turn — that’s something we normally don’t even start until the third or fourth practice.”

But after last spring, she was ready to give it all up.

It started with a hurdle — one she had cleared hundreds of times.

At the Highland Gold Baton Relays on April 5, 2025, Townsend was running the third leg of a mixed 4x100 shuttle hurdle relay when her back foot clipped the barrier and sent her crashing to the track. She got up, everything went black, and she didn’t finish the race.

The fall left her with a pinched nerve in her neck that robbed her of nearly 70 percent of grip strength in one arm. But the neck was only part of it. The impact had also done something to her left foot, though nobody knew quite how bad yet.

“My first concern was her neck,” Eli said. “My gut reaction was that it was very concerning.”

He was right.

She was put on steroids for the nerve issue, which temporarily masked the foot pain. But at the Tiger-Grizz meet in Idaho Falls on April 26, reality set in. She came off a hurdle and knew something was wrong. She didn’t make the finals in the 300 hurdles or high jump. She finished last in the 100 hurdles. An MRI afterward revealed a bruised navicular bone — the small bone in the arch of the foot that absorbs impact with every stride.

So Lydia didn’t compete again until the Class 4A State Track and Field Championships almost a month later — and even then she needed a medical hardship exemption just to get there. She still managed to repeat, sharing the title with Cole Valley Christian’s Macie Kern, a two-time state champion now at Northwest Nazarene University, after neither cleared 11-6.

But even five weeks later at Nike Outdoor Nationals — held at historic Hayward Field on the campus of the University of Oregon in Eugene — she still wasn’t herself. Physically, Lydia was fine. But the injuries and that season had taken a mental toll.

She cleared only 11-3 and finished 32nd. A year earlier at the same meet, she had earned All-American honors with a sixth-place finish.

“It was mental warfare in my head,” she said. “There were so many things going on. It was horrible.”

So sitting on that mat in Eugene, Lydia knew she was done. Done with pole vault. Done with track. Done with it all.

“I lost my spark. I lost my love for this sport,” she said. “I drove myself into the ground. I just didn’t want to do it anymore.”

“Back then, my identity was track and field,” she said. “When that’s your identity and you’re hurt and not competing well — you have nothing.”

Eli told her to pump the brakes. He and Chase Collins — owner of EGO Performance and a certified sports psychology coach who had been working with Lydia since her sophomore year — agreed she needed a break. So Lydia and her mother, Brandi, headed to California for a few weeks. Shopping, the beach, Sea World.

“It was definitely the release that I needed,” Lydia said. “I’m always around my dad for track, so it was nice to just be with my mom for something.”

Upon her return, Lydia was ready to get back at it with a new lease on life.

“You could see the killer back in her,” Collins said.

Her father saw it too.

So he thought this was the perfect time to take her back to the beginning — back to their backyard in Inkom, before the state titles and the recruiting calls and the weight of everyone’s expectations. They went back to square one — three-step approach, basic drills, hundreds of jumps from short distance, one step at a time all the way back to a full approach, generally a week or two between each change.

The focus was on her takeoff. Every time Lydia had raised her handhold or moved to a longer pole, it eroded — something both of them had always known was the ceiling on her potential.

“I would describe it as the perfect storm,” Eli said. “It forced us to start over, and in that process, it allowed us to fix a couple of things that were really holding her back. Without the injury, without the mental block, we would have never started over. And that start-over was the key ingredient to her success this year.”

Collins had his own unique approach to rebuilding Lydia’s confidence. He built her a personalized visualization script — an audio file set to her favorite music, walking her through a perfect pole vault in vivid detail. The goal embedded in the recording: 13 feet, 4 inches.

She listened to it every night. She still does.

“The idea is to make it so real that it’s already happened,” Collins said. “So when you get there, it’s just another day.”

That day came sooner than anyone expected.

Lydia competed for the first time in more than five months at the WSTC Thanksgiving Vault in Willamette, Ore., on Nov. 29.

“Night and day from the last meet I was at,” she said. “No pressure. Just, you’re here to get better.”

She did and then some. Lydia went 12-6 — more than a foot higher than anything she had officially cleared all of last season.

Next came Reno, where she topped 13 feet for the first time at the UCS Spirit National Pole Vault Summit — a barrier she’d been chasing since her sophomore year.

“Thirteen is a big number,” she said. “I feel like you can jump 12 with a little bit of luck, but 13 — you’re really putting in the work. Any girl who jumps 13 is pretty good. That’s the number every high school girl who’s shooting to go to college wants to hit.”

Then came Weber State on Jan. 23, 2026. Townsend cleared 13-4 — the exact height Collins had embedded in her visualization script — shattering a facility record that had stood for 26 years and posting what was at the time the 11th-best mark in the nation.

It was more than a foot higher than anything she had officially ever put down — and came after an outdoor season in which she never cleared anything past 11-6.

“I almost cried,” Collins said. “She went through all that — and it’s just really cool to see her overcome it.”

For Eli, it was deeply personal.

“I had always envisioned her bettering my marks,” said Eli, who competed in the pole vault at Idaho State. “She may not be bulletproof — but I think she might be rubberized. She bounced really well.”

Lydia went unbeaten during her indoor season, also winning the Stacy Dragila Open, the USATF Snake River Association Indoor Championships and the Simplot Games.

Back in Arcadia, she nearly didn’t get a shot at the banner mark. Lydia was down to her last attempt at 12-11. She had run through her first attempt and didn’t swing up on the second.

It was a familiar spot. A year earlier at state, she was in the exact same position — down to her final attempt. Only this time Lydia wasn’t fighting through injuries or mental blocks. So she had no doubt.

“My third jump, I was just like, I’m gonna make it,” she said. “I definitely thrive with pressure. Some people crumble — but I’m not that person.”

She cleared it. Then 13-5 on her first attempt, and then 13-8 — same story.

“I knew she’d come back,” Eli said. “Pole vaulting is so addicting — it’s almost like a drug. I had no idea she’d come back with such a vengeance.”

Lydia did try her hand at 14 feet. But she wasn’t quite able to make it over — not yet at least.

“Fourteen is going to come,” she said. “I’m not worried about it.”

After receiving her medal and the pictures were taken, Lydia told her parents she’d be right back. She went to the back of the runway and sat down — the same way she had at Nike Outdoor Nationals. Only this time it was a much different feeling.

“I was just so emotional,” she said. “Kind of trying to choke down tears. I was just thinking about how proud I am of myself — to go from the darkest spot in my life and push through it, and to have faith, and to finally be at the light at the end of the tunnel.”

That faith will now take her to BYU, one of the premier track and field programs in the country. The Cougars compete in the Big 12, won a combined 47 conference titles between indoor and outdoor since 1983 and finished ninth at last year’s NCAA Indoor Championships — winning a national title in the distance medley relay in the process.

“I’m so excited,” Lydia said. “I’m excited to train with amazing athletes and be part of something bigger than myself.”

Although the Townsend family weren’t exactly the biggest BYU fans prior to her signing there in November. Eli competed against them during his time at Idaho State, when BYU would routinely dismantle the Bengals’ vault crew.

“I always joked I’m not going to pay full tithe because I don’t want my money going to the BYU track team that beats me,” Eli said with a laugh. “It was kind of a joke — but still kind of serious.”

They’ve come around quickly and understandably.

“We’re drinking the blue Kool Aid,” Eli said, “and it is awfully delicious.”

Before heading to Provo, though, Lydia will serve an LDS mission in Honolulu, Hawaii. She also has a state title to defend and an interesting perspective.

“My family and I have talked about how getting hurt and having the worst season of my life is honestly the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she said. “It put me in the places that I needed to be.”