Sophomore jumps to occasion

Last week, heading into the opening indoor meet of the season at Michigan, a wounded pole vault corps found itself in a grave situation.\nFreshman David Stead suffered a season-ending broken arm. Two fifth-year seniors remained on the roster, however their eligibility for the indoor season had been previously spent. Such left junior Casey Friske the only pole-vaulter on the indoor roster.\nThus answered sophomore Jake Wiseman, a decathlete with limited experience in the pole vault. Wiseman stepped in for Stead and broke his personal record by almost two feet with a jump of 14'7" to earn a fourth place finish and give the team five valuable points.\n"He just did a really great job in the pole vault," coach Marshall Goss said. "He had never vaulted over twelve feet in his life before then. That's a great example of how one steps up to the challenge when someone goes down."\nHe also competed in the shot put and high jump where he placed 10th and seventh respectively, scoring eight total points in the team's winning effort.\n"He was just really pumped up and ready to go," Friske said. "One of the only reasons he didn't go higher was because we ran out of poles."\nWiseman, a transfer from the University of Louisville, did not even compete in track until his junior year of high school at Corydon Central High School in Corydon, Ind. He was a standout in the long jump and hurdling events in high school and found he was quite a versatile athlete. When he made it to Louisville, he competed in the decathlon and qualified for Junior Nationals as a freshman. After his freshman year, he transferred to Indiana where he redshirted last season.\n"That meet this weekend was basically my first meet in a year and a half," Wiseman said. "I just knew that I wanted to do good. There's been a lot of preparation for this year."\nThe indoor season does not have a decathlon so Wiseman will spend the indoor track season competing in different events to keep sharp for each event. He will continue to fill in at the pole vault where he hopes to reach 16 feet by the end of the season.\n"I'm not really that good at any single event," Wiseman said. "I'm just all right at all of them."\nWiseman will find out this weekend if he can keep his consistency for the pole vault. He said that he is always positive about competition and hopes to jump even higher than last weekend. His teammates said that consistency should not be a problem for Wiseman.\n"He's a pretty big guy and real strong," Friske said. "I think he'll have the consistency where we won't have to worry about that from him. Everyone has a bad day, but with the strong guys, if they have a bad day, you can muscle right through it"