In today's high schools, extreme sports and the X Games rule. Instead of throwing around a baseball or kicking a soccer ball, more and more kids want to hurl themselves off ramps on a bike or grind rails on a skateboard. Some of these thrill-seekers find an outlet for their need for the adrenaline rush of flight on their school's track teams as pole vaulters, since not too many area high schools offer varsity skateboarding.

"I started my sophomore year in high school," freshman Kristin Stoniecki said. "I really wanted to do it because it was only the guys in my high school doing it, so I wanted to be like them because I'm a big tomboy. I just wanted to pole vault, especially when people said that I couldn't."

Stoniecki wanted to pole vault so badly that she transferred to Marquette from Loyola Chicago because the Ramblers did not offer pole vaulting with its track program.

Stoniecki and senior Zach Pawlowski have both set school records this year under the tutelage of special pole vaulting coach Scott Synold.

"He knows exactly what he's talking about," Stoniecki said. "I think it's worked out really well."

Synold, 29, who vaulted at Wisconsin and graduated from Wauwatosa West, is one of the top scholastic pole vaulters in state history. He returned to Milwaukee this season to coach out of what he calls "a passion for the sport."

"This year it's a volunteer position, but if things go well, next year I'll be a coach on the payroll," Synold said. "I love coaching, but there are ulterior motives too. It gives me a place to train and a place to use the poles, because otherwise I wouldn't have anyplace else to do that."

Synold still competes in open tournaments, and if his body agrees with him, he will be competing against the Marquette vaulters he coaches at the Wisconsin Twilight meet in Madison this weekend.

"That releasing of energy that's lifting you up…," Synold said. "It's pretty addicting."

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on May 5 2005.