'Who are you and what have you done with Anthony?'

There’s a Swedish-American pole vault world record holder who has his eye on Kansas senior Anthony Meacham. 

But it’s not that Meacham is all that close to breaking Mondo Duplantis’ record of 6.31 meters. Instead, it's because Duplantis’ father, Greg, and KU jumps coach Tom Hays actually used to compete together back in their vaulting days. 

The two still keep in touch today, with Hays congratulating Greg on his son’s success after each of the 15 times Mondo has broken his own world record, and Greg tipping his cap to Hays’ KU pole vaulters, who have become a true powerhouse in the sport. 

Earlier this month, Meacham became the latest vaulter to add to KU’s storied tradition in the sport, clearing 19 feet (5.8 meters or 19 feet, 0.25 inches) to win the recent Battle on the Bayou at LSU. 

It marked the first time that Meacham had cleared 19 feet — the equivalent of hitting .400 in baseball or running a 4-minute mile — and also marked the first time that two athletes at the same school have achieved the feat.

Not just in the same year. Ever. 

Meacham, the reigning Big 12 indoor pole vault champ, and teammate/roommate, Ashton Barkdull, the 2026 indoor national champion, both jumped 5.8 meters in the past month.

“I came to Kansas as a vaulter because of a pretty good tradition that was already established even back then,” Hays recently told R1S1 Sports. “And now, like Coach Self says, I’m sort of just the gatekeeper of what someone else started. If Kansas wasn’t Kansas, I don’t think it would've happened. The history of the event here is just better than everywhere.” 

And it's getting better by the day. 

“It’s an adrenaline rush like nothing else. And it’s so fun because you’re just throwing yourself in the air as high as you can.” 

— KU senior Anthony Meacham on pole vaulting

To understand what Meacham and Barkdull accomplished just 21 days apart, you have to take a minute to recognize what 19 feet actually looks like. 

It’s roughly the height of a full-grown male giraffe. It’s nearly two basketball goals stacked on top of each other. It comes to mind when semi drivers and buses pass under bridges and see the clearance height posted on a bright sign at the point of no return. 

And jumping over it is something that Meacham never thought was possible until he finally cleared 18 feet (5.5 meters) just last season. 

“I don’t think it has entirely sunk in yet,” Meacham told R1S1 Sports during a recent sit-down interview before practice. “Out of nowhere, I just started jumping really good, and then it was like, ’19 feet is a possibility.’ But I also know I can jump higher. I still have so much room to improve.”

To say the moment came out of nowhere would be inaccurate. Meacham has been working toward this for nearly a decade. But as he and anyone else in the pole vaulting universe will tell you, “That’s just track. Anything can happen at any point in time.” 

And that’s why Barkdull, who is redshirting the current outdoor season, had a little fun with his best friend during the Bayou meet. 

“I actually got a text from Ashton in the middle of the meet,” Meacham recalled. “I didn’t open it until after the meet, but it just said, ‘Who are you and what you have done with Anthony?’” 

His response? 

“I was just like, ‘I don’t know; it just happened.’” 

Moments like that are common, both in person and from afar. And Meacham said it speaks to the bond the two 19-footers have built and the closeness of the entire KU pole vaulting community. 

“We’re always trying to push each other,” Meacham said. “So, if he’s jumping high, I want to jump just as high or higher. We just have this ongoing battle between each other and everyone else. But, at the end of the day, we’re always supporting each other.” 

Meacham’s jump of 5.8 meters went down as his third consecutive personal record. He jumped 5.7 at indoor nationals to earn All-American honors and both bars have put him and Barkdull on the brink of owning the all-time KU record. 

Zach Bradford currently has that at 5.81 meters, just ahead the two current Jayhawks.

The recent milestone moment also gave Meacham a real and reasonable shot at pushing for the NCAA record — 6 meters even (19 feet, 8.25 inches) — owned, not surprisingly, by Mondo. 

Meacham was so energized by clearing 19 feet in Louisiana that he asked for the bar to be set at 6.01 just to get a look at Mondo’s collegiate record. 

When you win an event and you’re the last to go out, you can ask the meet staff to put the bar at any height you’d like. So, technically, Meacham could have put it at 5.82 and gone for Bradford’s KU record. But he was thinking bigger. 

“I just wanted to see it,” Meacham told R1S1 Sports. “I took a jump and looked at my coach and said, ‘It’s not that high.’ I wasn’t actually very close to getting it, but, just looking at it, it doesn’t seem that far off.”

So, that’s the goal now. The new one. The one he didn’t even think was possible when he decided to come to KU from small-town Woodsboro, Texas a handful of years ago. 

At the time, Meacham hoped that with a lot of hard work and a little luck he eventually would be able to clear 18 feet. 

“I thought that would be pretty sweet one day,” he said. “Nineteen was unreachable for the longest time, but I think if you set small goals, you end up having bigger goals after your small goals are met.” 

Meacham credits Hays’ coaching for helping him figure that out. He said Hays has a way of always preparing his vaulters "for the big meets," even when those days are weeks away. 

In considering various colleges back in high school, Meacham learned that Hays tends to think that way. And when he combined Hays’ reputation with what KU could offer, picking Kansas became a no-brainer. 

“Clearly, he knows what he’s doing,” Meacham said of Hays. “I did my research. He’s the best coach out there. But I didn’t want to go somewhere where I would be the highest jumper. I wanted to go somewhere where I could be lowest or middle of the pack and then have people who are jumping really high and try to work towards that.”

That’s how it’s always been for Meacham in the sport. 

He played football, basketball and tennis when he was younger and didn’t even try pole vaulting until his club coach, Kevin Hall, approached his parents at a football game and asked them if their son might want to try it. 

This came during a game when Meacham ripped off a 70-yard touchdown run, and his dad immediately and repeatedly told Hall no. 

“He’s scared of heights, he can’t do that,” Meacham recalled his father telling Hall. “But they finally asked me and I was like, ‘Yeah, I'll go try it. From there, it was just like, it’s fun to do, why not continue to do it?’”

He hasn’t looked back since. 

Meacham gave up all other sports entirely after his sophomore year of high school and has focused exclusively on track — and pole vault — since then. 

He said he fell in love with vaulting pretty much the first time he tried it, saying that he likes how it’s a very complex sport but also very simple at the same time. He enjoys knowing that he doesn’t have to be perfect to make steady progress and, of course, likes the physical feeling pole vault provides. 

“It’s an adrenaline rush like nothing else,” he said. “And it’s so fun because you’re just throwing yourself in the air as high as you can.” 

While there is a fair amount of freedom in the sport, pole vault is still a pretty technical sport, requiring sound mastery of several steps and lots of consistency to get to the point where you’re flying. 

“It’s everything,” Meacham said. “You gotta have speed, a good core and good upper body strength. You’re running as fast as you can down the runway, but you also want to have rhythm at the same time.”

Developing all of that has led Meacham to today, where he’s one of just 21 college athletes in the history of track and field to ever clear 19 feet while in school. 

So, the natural question from here is what comes next for the 22-year-old, 2-time Big 12 champ and first-team All-American? 

Meacham has just a couple of months of school competition left and he said that clearing 19 feet has made him think seriously about a future in professional track. Those who know him know that he’ll probably go for it. 

Until then, though, he wants to go for everything he can while he’s still wearing KU blue. 

“I think it’s mainly keep training,” he said. “The bars are gonna come. So, I’m gonna keep training, focus on the little things and, at each meet, focus on one bar at a time. … I know I can jump higher. I have so much room to improve, so I’m just constantly thinking, ‘OK, what’s the next bar?’”

In the eyes of Greg Duplantis, who knows a thing or two about vaulting and the grind that it takes to be a champion, that next bar could be even more memorable than those Meacham has cleared thus far. 

“He says, with a little tailwind and perfect weather conditions, he might just get it,” Hays said Greg told him about Meacham’s chances of breaking the collegiate mark. 

“I don’t know that we try to sell that type of thinking except for maybe getting the kids to try to dream a little bit,” Hays added. “And, with Anthony, you kind of expected him to make it; you didn’t know when. As a coach, though, it’s just unbelievable to watch those kids grow up and it’s so fun to see. You’d want a thousand like him, even if he didn’t jump 19 feet.”

Meacham's next shot at adding to the history he's already made will come this weekend at the Bryan Clay Invitational in Asuza, California.

After that, it's two more regular season meets followed by the possibility of three more in the postseason.

— For tickets to all KU athletic events, visit kuathletics.com