When pole vaulter Bryce Barkdull was being recruited by college out of Kansas’ Andover Central High School, he had a few things on his check list.
He wanted to go somewhere with a great vaulting program. He wanted to be groomed by an elite coach. And he wanted to find the absolute best fit for his development as an athlete.
"I was just like, 'Oh, man. If he can do it, I can do it.'"
— Ashton Barkdull on his brother Bryce's start in pole vaulting
So, it mattered very little that his older brother, KU junior Ashton Barkdull, was already an established part of the Kansas pole vault team. In fact, it may have even hurt.
“Originally, I was looking for somewhere more far from home and from Ashton,” Bryce admitted this week during a Zoom interview with R1S1 Sports. “I wanted to go for the best coaching and the best program, and it just ended up being that KU was definitely the best program for me. It just so happened that Ashton was here.”
Fast-forward nearly one full season of indoor and outdoor track with the Jayhawks, and the younger Barkdull brother has changed his tune on teaming up with his big bro.
“It’s not a negative anymore,” Bryce said with a huge smile.
How could it be? There aren’t many things that are negative happening in the Barkdull brothers’ track lives these days.
Just a week removed from being named the Big 12 Conference’s Outdoor Most Outstanding Freshman — an honor both brothers and their parents had to look up to learn more about — and watching his older brother win a Big 12 title, Bryce and Ashton both cleared 5.42 meters on Thursday night to qualify for Outdoor Nationals next month by finishing in the top 12 at regionals.
The accomplishment added to a stellar trend in the KU pole vaulting world, with the Jayhawks now having sent at least one vaulter to nationals for eight straight years.
“Personally, I wanted him here,” Ashton told R1S1 Sports during the same Zoom call from his hotel room in College Station, Texas. “Because I know how we can push each other and I felt like if we were both here it was gonna make us both jump higher. But I was also not too pushy because I knew if I was pushy then he was absolutely not coming here.”
“So, I let him make his own decision and let coach (Tom) Hayes do his work and cast his magical spells to get him here. But I also tried to make it very clear I wanted him here.”
The funny thing about the two vaulters teaming up at Kansas is that, for the better part of Bryce’s first season as a Jayhawk, it wasn’t like they were teammates at all.
With Ashton recovering from offseason surgery on a torn labrum in his hip, Bryce was left to find his footing on his own with one of the top pole vault programs in the country.
Ashton was there for him in the same way a tutor is for student-athletes in the classroom. But for the entire indoor season and the first three meets of the outdoor stretch, Bryce was with the rest of the KU vaulters working on his craft while Ashton was off on his own schedule, rehabbing and building his body back into shape.
“I wasn’t pole vaulting, I wasn’t doing anything with them, really,” Ashton recalled. “I was just on crutches and focused on rehab. But now that I’ve been able to come back and work with the whole group, it’s been great to be out there with him. We’re able to hold each other accountable and if one of us is slacking off it’s kind of like, ‘Hey, pick it up.’”
The timing of Ashton’s rehab and Bryce’s arrival couldn’t have been much better.
As Bryce was seeking to find his way after the transition from high school to college, Ashton also was, in a sense, starting anew.
Because he was always the better athlete of the two brothers — both happily admit that — Ashton’s rise in pole vaulting, which did not start until his junior year of high school, included him skipping some steps along the way.
Bryce started in the event as a freshman in high school and progressed on a more traditional path. He was actually the one who got his older brother interested in pole vaulting to begin with.
“I was just like, ‘Oh, man. If he can do it, I can do it,’” Ashton said with a laugh.
Together, the two found themselves back at square one this school year, with Bryce learning and soaring as he went and Ashton getting the chance to go back and tackle some of those steps he skipped while rehabbing himself into form.
“He was just watching us do all of our workouts and he taught me all the warm-ups that we do and a lot of the drills,” Bryce said, crediting a lot of his success and acclimation to his brother. “At the same time that he was getting used to doing all that stuff again, I was learning all of the conditioning and drills and everything we do here. It was nice to do that alongside him and be able to both start slow.”
In that way, Ashton said the injury, which he competed through for most of his sophomore seasons, was a bit of a blessing because it allowed him to go back to basics, tackle the fundamentals and become “the vaulter I felt I should be.”
Recent results certainly have provided a glimpse into what that looks like, with Ashton desiring to compete for championships at the highest level since the moment he set foot on campus.
So far, that showing at the Big 12 meet, along with Thursday’s achievement, ranks at the top of his list of most memorable KU moments.
“I was the No. 1 KU guy and he was the No. 2 KU guy; that was really cool to be able to share that with him,” Ashton said. “Especially with him being a freshman and for him to step up was really, really exciting. Hopefully we can do that again at Nationals.”
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