INTRODUCTION: Terry Cook holds the University record in the pole vault in both indoor and outdoor track & field. He broke the outdoor record in 2019 as a sophomore, clearing 15 feet, 4.25 inches. In 2020, he set the indoor record at the Liberty League championships (15 feet, 9.75 inches). Cook earned All-Atlantic Region honors in the pole vault with a fourth place finish. He was the Liberty League runnerup in the pole vault and was fourth in the long jump. At season's end, he was ranked 15th in Division III and qualified for the NCAA Division III national championships. He was named an All-American in the pole vault by the United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. He is a Mechanical Engineering major. Here, he talks about what it takes to be lifted more than 15 feet off the ground.

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When did you first become involved in track & field?
I first got involved in track and field in 9th grade in the spring time for the outdoor season. I did not know my high school had an indoor track program at the time, and since in Connecticut there is no middle school track the earliest I could start was 9th grade.
 
What attracted you to it?
Since I was a gymnast before I was able to pole vault I knew a lot of other gymnasts that had either partially transitioned to doing both sports or quit gymnastics to pole vault so i already knew 4 or 5 of the pole vaulters at my school and they talked me into trying it. After telling my parents about my friends wanting me to try pole vaulting, they started to push me to try it too. I was also attracted by the difficulty and technique of it. Since I had come from gymnastics where one skill can take many months or years to get, the challenge of the technique of vaulting did not scare me that much. Until I had to start throwing myself upside down on a 14'+ fiberglass pole. That is scary.
 
The pole vault is an interesting event. At what age did you start to vault?
 I started pole vaulting at 14 when I was a freshman in high school and throughout high school I would compete for my local gymnastics gym during the winter and then when the gymnastics season was over, the outdoor track season would start I would largely switch to track. I would still go to both practices however. I would go to track practice right after school ended and then after track I would go home, eat, then go to gymnastics practice. Looking back I cannot figure out where I found the energy to do this.
 
How high was the bar in those early tries?
At my very first meet, the starting height for guys PV in high school is 7 feet, and goes up by 6 inches from there. I only cleared 7' and 7'6" but  since I had only been pole vaulting for a couple weeks at that point, I was happy with that. By the end of that freshman spring season I cleared 11' to take 4th place at our conference meet and to be the only freshman to qualify for class LL states in Connecticut.
 
Who were the coaches that worked with you on technique? Tell us about the practice sessions.
Coach Cohen and Dr. Sullivan were both great coaches. Coach Cohen had been coaching track for over 30 years when I was learning from him, and Dr. Sullivan was a pole vaulter for Brown back when he was a collegiate athlete. The very first practices started with how to hold the pole, since I am a lefty this was very confusing for everyone coaching me because all the lefts/rights were reversed. How to walk and run while holding the pole, and we would hold just a bit higher than we could reach and plant the pole on the  turf and jump over where it was planted to get the feeling of hanging on and what it would be like to go over the box. 
 
Were you nervous the first couple of times that you vaulted?
Somehow, I think the nerves now are worse than when they were back then. Back then when the bar was only 10,11,12 feet high it doesn't look that bad. But now with my personal best pushing almost 16 feet, I stand at the end of the runway and look how high it is and think to myself how the heck am I going to get over THAT?

 
Please describe the approach on the runway. Where is your focus?
My focus on the runway is making sure I start from the right distance, there is a measuring tape next to the runway to tell you how far you are from the box. I make sure I am holding in the right place on the pole, If Coach told me to change one of those things I need to remember to fix those, or if that was the same place I started last time? or did I move back again? It's easy to get lost how many times I may have moved back on the runway, or up on the pole. During the run I count my steps out loud so I know when to take off. Since everything else rides on getting a good takeoff, most of my focus is on making sure that is right and then the rest is mostly muscle memory. I will usually take a look at how high the bar is and then go through my pre-jump routine. I try not to focus on how high it is and focus on my takeoff because no matter how high the bar is, if I have a bad takeoff I won't be able to clear it.
 
What does it feel like, lifting into the air and going over that bar?
The feeling of getting  flung into the air by a giant piece of fiberglass is equally terrifying and thrilling. I wish I could remember more of my personal best jump because it happened so fast all I remember is leaving the ground, then there was a blur of motion, then I turned over and by the time my vision focused again I was way over the bar and then realized "oh shoot I am really over it I need to evade it now and make sure I dont hit it on the way down". Somehow I didn't hit the bar on the way down. I hit the mat and looked at the bar still sitting on the standards and I was in disbelief. I heard Coach Jay yelling, my teammate and Little, Jarod running up to the pit and yelling too. I didn't have any words. Writing this out and thinking about that jump is making my heart race all over again. Every time I clear a bar no matter how high is always a good feeling and a massive relief when landing on the mat. 
 
How flexible is the pole that is lifting you over the bar? It has to be able to bend properly, yet be strong enough to carry you up and over the bar.
Since I jump on fiberglass poles they are more flexible than some of my competitors who jump on carbon fiber poles. There is no real competitive advantage to using either one, it just slightly changes the technique of how you use them. As you move  up in poles to longer, heavier poles they generally get stiffer but when running at full speed into them you can tell the difference and there are some times where I bent a pole over 90 degrees (luckily it didn't snap) and because of how much I bend the pole there is a really cool moment where I am upside down with my feet facing up, while the pole is fully bent and loaded, just off the ground where I have not traveled vertically much yet and that is a very scary but also exciting point in time where I have to put all my trust in the pole and myself to finish the jump.
 
Did you have any interest in other sports when you were at Simsbury HS in Connecticut? Or at UR when you first arrived here
Yes, in Simsbury I competed for the Gymnastics Training Center. I started going there when I was around 7 or 8 years old and kept going there up through my senior year of high school. So for over 10 years that gym was my second home, I spent around 10-12 hours a week there practicing. I also got my first job there helping them as a coach. I will always value the time I spent at the Gymnastics Training Center and I try to visit them as much as possible when I am home on breaks from school. When going to college Men' Gymnastics opportunities were very few and far between, this would mean I would likely need to join a club not affiliated with the school in order to keep doing gymnastics. I was also not at a point where I was competitive enough to make it onto the big-name teams for schools that still have men's gymnastics programs. I do not want to make it sound like I would rather be doing gymnastics instead of track, while I do miss doing the sport, the toll it was taking on my body and knowing that I would have more fun competing at higher levels in track made it the sport to continue with in college.  
 
When you are home, do you work with any youth programs – coaching, counselling, serving as an official or a time? What do you like about doing that?
I have coached for the gym I competed for ( The Gymnastics Training Center) and for the YMCA closest to me as well. This experience coaching 5-8 year old kids also helped me in my sports because it gave me a lot of practice in spotting errors in my teammates technique and gave me a lot of knowledge in how to help them fix those mistakes or what might be causing it. You know how they say one of the best ways to make sure you know something is to be able to teach it? This is what coaching did for me with gymnastics, being able to teach and see dozens of kids attempt the same skill gave me a lot of insight into what the best ways were to teach those skills as well as the most common errors people make while doing them. This helped out my coaches a lot too because my gymnastics coach as well as Coach Jay now are often stretched thin trying to watch multiple events and keep an eye on many groups of people at once. Being able to coach has let me help my coaches by watching my teammates for them so they can pay more attention to the groups of my teammates. I would like to think that this experience has helped me to become a leader on the team and contribute to my teammates electing me as captain this year.  While I do not treat being a captain as being an extra coach of sorts, I do make sure my teammates know I am always there as a resource for life off the track as well.
 
What led you to the University of Rochester?
I did not know the University of Rochester existed until the fall of my senior year of high school. I was sifting through a bunch of flyers and junk mail from other schools, when I got a flyer to check out and come to a recruiting weekend for the Track and Field team. When I read out loud that the flyer was from the U of R my dad stopped and said I should keep that one since it was a good engineering school. I went on to email Coach Albert about attending a recruiting weekend and I had a great time being hosted by another pole vaulter and meeting some of the team. When visiting other schools, nothing seemed to fit my personality and what I was looking for as much as the U of R did. I always think it sounds cheesy when people say " i just knew it was right for me" but that's what happened. I knew it was right for me. The acceptance letters from other schools gave me an "oh, cool" reaction. When I got the acceptance letter to the University of Rochester I was actually excited and ran around the house looking for my parents to tell them too. I still have the first flyer I mentioned and the acceptance letter sitting in my room behind me while I am writing this.  
 
Why did you choose Mechanical Engineering as your major?
I come from a family of engineers. My older sister graduated with her mechanical engineering degree when I was a sophomore in high school. My dad got a degree in mechanical engineering and then worked in aerospace engineering for 34 years. My uncle got a masters in mechanical engineering and is now a Dean of Research at the university of  Pittsburgh for their Biomedical Engineering department. I would not say I was forced into being a mechanical engineer, but I think it fits in pretty well. Math and Science were always strong subjects for me as well, at least until I took the 160 series math classes here... But things like mechanics in physics and even the electricity and magnetism part physics made sense to me pretty quickly when learning them throughout high school and here at the U of R. 
 
What is your senior project for Mechanical Engineering?
My senior design project this semester is sponsored by the Astronomy department. They need a device to help do research on how asteroids hit the surfaces of planets. Our project is to make a device to launch small objects ("asteroids") in a reliable and repeatable manner so they can study the effects of how the asteroid was traveling and match that to the marks on the surface where it hit. For example being able to spot what the impact crater of an asteroid that was spinning a certain direction looks like could give some insight to determining how craters spotted on Earth or other planets were formed.
 
Are you involved in any campus groups tied to your studies?
Unfortunately I am not involved with any groups related to the mechanical engineering department. As much as I would like to be, I have not found the time in my schedule to join a club or group.