Haleigh Eckert: Lucky number 13

By Maggie Fipps

“Twelve twelve!” her teammates cheer, encouraging senior pole vaulter Haleigh Eckert as she tries to accomplish a goal six years in the making. 

They are well aware that twelve feet twelve inches is thirteen feet, but that’s an unlucky number around here. 

“I’ve been trying to hit the 13 mark for, no joke, 6 years of my life,” Eckert said. “I think it’s been sort of a mental thing probably because my personal record before was 12’ 11” and three quarters like this much you know, before I got 13.” 

Eckert represents that quarter inch with her fingers, a miniscule distance on the ground, but massive on the pole. 

Eckert was “this close” to not even attending Cedarville at all, and that journey began back in 2019.

Eckert grew up in Mason, Ohio with an incredibly close family: parents, three younger brothers and of course their two dogs.  

“My upbringing has been such a solid foundation to my faith because the Lord protected me from a lot of things, especially in high school, Eckert said.”

In her freshman year of high school, a group of friends invited her to church with them. Eckert’s family did not attend church, so she only had a few vague connotations about faith. 

“I did know that there was something and someone up there, I just didn’t know who or what,” Eckert said.  

She loved the church’s doughnuts but was not sure how to digest the Bible. 

“Honestly, it made me feel like a better human being,” Eckert said. “I think that was what I was going for until I found my faith, like ‘How can I be the best person for other people?’ Church seems like another thing to add to my character. It was almost a perception thing of how other people saw me.”

At around the same time she began experimenting with church, she began experimenting with pole vaulting too. She first tried track, but found a truth universally acknowledged: she hated running. 

“I went and I tried running and I was pretty bad,” Eckert said. “I saw the pole vaulters doing  handstands and rope climbs, and I was like, ‘I want to do that, that looks really fun.’”

However, it did not look fun to Dr. Eckert, her dad. 

“I asked my dad and he’s like, ‘OK, you could do anything except for pole vault,’” Eckert said. 

Pole vaulting is unlike most talents, like singing or running. Most people do not begin with an innate sense of the ramp-up or the jump. It takes a lot of training and a lot of falling.

“I’ve loved it because I feel like anyone could do it because it’s so technical,” Eckert said. “If you put in the years you can get somewhere with it. It’s fun to look back on because I have old videos and I fall off the pit, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

As she grew in pole vaulting, she grew in her faith. But when her track season halted in the spring of 2020, it allowed her to meet with her friend Katie, a friend she met in choir. 

“She was a relatively new believer as well, and we were both searching at the same time,” Eckert said. “One day in choir, she had her Bible. And she was like ‘Haleigh, would you want to read this together? And I was like ‘Yeah, I think I would.’”

Over the next couple of months, either in coffee shops or on park benches, they spent hours poring over Scripture and praying together. It was in one of those prayers that Eckert made the jump from concepts to confidence in Christ. 

“It was more than ‘Oh Lord, can you please do this?’” Eckert said. “It was ‘I need you to hear me. I need you to be with me. I can’t go a day without knowing you are with me.”

Eckert still calls Katie every once in a while, reflecting on how different their lives are now. 

“We were little high schoolers reading the Bible, and now she graduated last year,” Eckert said. “I’m about to graduate college. We know the Lord, and we know our purpose and where our lives are going because of that. It’s literally changed the direction of our lives.”

That new direction brought her to Cedarville, where she was able to major in pre-med, pole vault and grow in her faith, all in one place. 

“One of the reasons I love track the most is because I love my team,” Eckert said. “When you’re all competing together, it’s one thing, but when you’re all competing for the same goal, for the same purpose, that changes the environment of every competition you go to and it just makes it so much more meaningful.”

Which takes us back to the beginning of this story, her teammates watching with bated breath at the Wittenberg Track and Field Steemer Showcase. 

“Twelve twelve!” her teammates cheer, encouraging Eckert to remember the past six years of growth that led to this. 

On her first try, she began at 12’ 3”. She missed the first jump. She missed the second jump. Finally, she made the third, narrowly missing a no-height, or three misses in a row. She was “this close” to disqualifying herself. 

Next, she moved up to 12’ 10”. Like clockwork, she missed the first attempt. She missed the second attempt. She made the third. 

On the inauspicious 13’ 0”, excuse me, 12’ 12”, she missed the first. She missed the second. Then, she cleared the third. 

Pandemonium ensued. 

“Right after I cleared it, my teammates ran up to me and they were hugging me,” Eckert said. “Mom was screaming because she too has been watching me for a long time and wanted me to get that milestone. All my roommates were there too. And so they were all cheering.” 

In her senior season, she conquered that unlucky 13, but she’s not done yet. She wants to solidify her spot for Nationals, where she is currently ranked 11th in Division II, (13th would have been too ironic). 

After Nationals and graduation, she will attend medical school at the University of Cincinnati in the fall, heading back home to where it all began. 

She’s “this close” to accomplishing her next goal, this one hopefully only four years in the making. 

Maggie Fipps is a junior Journalism student and the Editor in Chief of Cedars. She enjoys playing the piano and thrifting, and you may spot her around campus sporting Packers gear head to toe.

Photo by Logan Howard