Denver South pole vaulter Lauren Sankoff is setting the bar high with her resilience ...Middle East

LONGMONT — Connor Westphal coaches pole vault for every high school in Denver Public Schools. He’s never worked with a vaulter quite like Lauren Sankoff.

“Lauren has, by far, out of any of the schools and any of the students I’ve had the best already, and she’s just a sophomore,” Westphal said, baking in the sun on the track at Longmont High School on Friday.

He was there to coach Lauren as she vaulted in the Hoka St. Vrain Invitational, one of the state’s most elite high school meets. Hundreds of athletes were fighting for a spot at the state championship that day. Lauren, already a shoo-in, was aiming higher. If she could get a new personal record of 11 feet, 9 inches, she’d qualify for the Nike Outdoor Nationals in June. 

She entered the meet with the bar at 10 feet, 4 inches. On the first attempt, she kicked it off. On the second attempt, the bar fell as she crossed over it. She had one last chance. On third attempts, Lauren tells herself, “I’m going to get this. I want this, so I’m going to work hard to get this.”

She came up to the runway, stared down the bar, put the pole on her shoulder, checked her grip, lifted it up above her and took off. She cleared the bar with room to spare. 

Lauren has had an incredible season this year. She’s broken the Denver South High School record, won the DPS City League meet, and is tied as the fifth-best female vaulter in the Colorado High School Activities Association 5A class.

She’s strong, fast and agile. But ask anyone who knows Lauren what makes her a great athlete, and you’ll hear another side. It’s her attitude that gets her over the bar — the same attitude that helped her survive childhood cancer.

In fifth grade, she started having really bad headaches that wouldn’t go away. After some tests and an exploratory surgery, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. Weeks later, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. While going through chemotherapy and online school at age 9, she was unfazed.

“I was just like a very outgoing kid, so it was pretty easy for me,” Lauren said. “But you know, positivity is the way to go.”

Lauren was never scared or worried because she knew the cancer was treatable. Her older sister, twin brother and parents took it harder. Her siblings joke that if anyone was going to get cancer, it had to be Lauren, because she’s the toughest of the three. Her dad, Jeff Sankoff, agrees.

“On her worst days, she always found a way to make everybody else feel better about it,” Jeff said. “We all aspire to be as strong as she was and continues to be.”

On May 11, she celebrated five years cancer-free. 

When stay-at-home orders were lifted and her gymnastic team started practicing outdoors in the summer of 2020, Lauren showed up. She had lost a lot of weight and muscle from chemotherapy. She would get exhausted and nauseated, but that didn’t deter her. Thanks to that grit, she bounced back better than she was before. 

On top of gymnastics, she had always been a runner. During her first year in high school, she planned to join the track and field team as a distance runner. One of her gymnastics coaches also coached track and told her she should give pole vault a try. So she did and quickly found a new favorite sport. 

“I didn’t think I was very good at the time, but it was fun. I like the community a lot, and then the more I did it, the more I started to enjoy it,” Lauren, who is now 15 said.

Hard work pays off

Pole vault is an extremely technical sport. It takes most athletes a long time to understand the fundamentals of using a giant pole, to hurl their bodies into the air to cross over a bar that high. Westphal says Lauren improved very quickly and by the end of the season had a solid running approach and pole plant, which are essential to get higher in the air. 

But a good approach and plant weren’t good enough for Lauren. She was determined to bend the pole, and unlock new heights. So in the fall, she joined the Drift Motion Pole Vault Club. 

“I’ve had kids with talent come through … and never really reach their potential,” the club’s head coach, Andy Munoz, said. “Some will show up, but there’s a difference between showing up and then wanting to learn.”

He quickly saw that Lauren was not going to waste her potential. When at practice, Munoz says, “she shows up, she works, she works hard.” And practice she has — eight times a week on top of school, where she’s keeping good grades and in two Advanced Placement classes. All that hard work has paid off this year. 

She ended the 2024 season with a personal record of 8 feet, 6 inches. This season, the goal was to break 10 feet. She cleared 10 feet, 3 inches at the first meet. In the winter, she thought she’d be able to get to 11 feet, 6 inches by her senior year. It’s now her personal record. She will compete at the Colorado State Track and Field Championships Saturday morning.

At St. Vrain, after clearing the first bar, she continued on to 10 feet, 10 inches. She cleared it on her second attempt. Then the bar moved to 11 feet, 4 inches On her third attempt, she came up short. She was jumping on a new, bigger pole, which can take a while to get used to. She immediately started telling Westphal her analysis of where she went wrong. 

But Westphal quickly stepped in. “I told her if she has a bad meet today, the silver lining is that she’ll have a great meet at state. It’s a standard pole vault superstition.”

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