Brandon Hanoch

Friday December 6, 2019

The Oral Roberts University Track Team traveled to Lawrence, KS where Brandon competed in his first meet as a collegiate athlete at the University of Kansas Bob Timmons Challenge. 

Brandon began the competition at 4.01m (13′ 1-3/4″) and easily cleared on 1st attempt.  The next height was 4.31m (14′ 1-1/2″) and both Brandon and Christian had 1st attempt clearances.  The next height was 4.61m (15′ 1-1/2″) and both Brandon and Christian sailed over on their 2nd attempts.  This bettered Brandon’s indoor PR by 1-1/2″.

Brandon attempted the next height of 4.76m (15′ 7-1/4″) and had a couple of good attempts at it.  Christian cleared on his 2nd attempt, and went on clear his collegiate best height of 4.91m (16′ 1-1/4″).

Christian & Brandon ended up placing 6th & 7th out of eight vaulters. Overall, Jake Albright, a former KU vaulter won the competition by beating KU’s Hussain Al Hizam on misses at 5.51m (18′ 1″).

Complete results can be found by clicking here.

Brandon’s Mom and I are very excited and proud to announce that Brandon has chosen to attend college and compete on the track team at Oral Roberts University!

 

Brandon will be coached by pole vault legend and former World and American record holder, ORU Head Coach Joe Dial. The Dial family has been close friends of ours for many decades… going back to the mid-1980’s when Coach Dial was my pole vault coach at the University of Oklahoma. He took me in as a 16′ vaulter and turned me into an 18′ vaulter… now it’s time to hand Brandon over to Coach Dial and let him do the same with him! Coach Dial has worked with Brandon since he was a youngster running track with Coach Eric Hudgens at Personal Best, and later with Dial Athletics club.

Returning to Moore High School four days after winning the 6A State Championship, Brandon joined with sixteen of the top vaulters in the state to compete at the 2019 Oklahoma Meet of Champions marking his final track meet as a Broken Arrow Tiger.

Logan was first to clear sailing over his 2nd PR of the evening on his 2nd attempt and took the lead in the competition. Preston failed to clear 15’3″ leaving only Brandon to take his 3rd attempt… a make would keep him in the competition and a miss would give Logan the win. In dramatic fashion, Brandon had plenty of height over the bar and as he fell, his chest scraped the crossbar bending it downward. As the bar slid off his chest, it snapped upward inadvertently hitting Brandon’s hand as he was trying to avoid the bar. As he landed on the pit, the crossbar remained on the pegs giving Brandon a successful vault and making him the winner of the 2019 Meet of Champions! Brandon went to take three attempts at a PR height of 16’2″ delivering a couple of very good attempts.

Brandon competed in his final State Track meet on Friday at Moore High School and came away a Class 6A State Champion! Brandon started the competition at 14’0″ with only four competitors remaining and cleared on his 2nd attempt.  At 14’6″ he took the lead by easily clearing on his 1st attempt with only two other competitors clearing the bar on their 2nd and 3rd attempts.  

  Sophomore teammate Crayton Shaw jumped 13’0″ and made the podium earning a 5th place finish.  On the girls side, teammate and close friend Shelbi Day jumped 10’9″ setting her outdoor PR and tied for 2nd place.

As the 2nd and final day came to a close, the Broken Arrow boys team, had a 20 point lead over Jenks going into the next to last event, the 1600m run.  Both Jenks and BA had runners in the race and Jenks was hoping to close the gap, setting up a showdown in the 4×400 relay in the final event.  But that was not what happened as BA’s Andres Chapa, ran a great race and placed 6th beating the Jenks runner by two places, increasing BA’s lead by two more points… sealing BA’s team championship, as even a 1st place finish in the 4×400 relay would not give Jenks enough points to overtake BA!

The Broken Arrow girls team finished strong as well, finishing as State Runners-up!  Congratulations girls!

The BA track team was sent to Ponca City, Oklahoma to compete in the 5A/6A Regional Track Meet.  Brandon had the best regional meet of his career clearing 15′ claiming his first regional championship.  Shelbi Day was also a regional champion on the girls side.  In addition, both the boys and girls teams won the team competitions setting them up nicely to compete for a championship at the State Meet next week.

Upon arrival the pit was setup such that the vaulters would be running into a fairly strong head wind. With some strong unanimous persuasion the official agreed that we could flip the pits around, so we gathered all the vaulters and any coaches willing to help and began disassembling the pit and moving it to the other end of the runway. Of course the entire area around the pit was rain saturated and standing water so we all had nice soggy shoes by the time we finished.

In previous years, the Regional meet has always posed some problems for Brandon. His freshman and sophomore years we were sent to Tahlequah for regionals… one of the worst places to vault in the state and had terrible results… he no-heighted his freshman year, and placed 4th his sophomore year, jumping 12’6″, a foot below his usual, barely earning an additional qualifier spot to the state meet. His junior regionals was at Claremore and was definitely a better place to vault, but Brandon again struggled that day. During warmups and early in the competition, Brandon was veering to the right after the plant, and barely landing on the pit near the standards. Being a consistent 14′ vaulter at this point, he began the competition at 12′ to ensure he cleared a bar, but it took him 3 attempts and the first two were really ugly! But he did scrape by on his 3rd attempt and eventually straightened everything out and went on to clear 13’6 placing 2nd. Needless to say the regional meet was a dark ominous cloud on the horizon for me, but for his senior year, Brandon had committed himself to having the best regionals ever. And boy did he deliver!

Warmups went pretty well. The weather was very nice. We put the bungee at 15′ and he easily cleared. He began the competition at 13’… well below his PR of 16′, and this regionals, Brandon came down the runway and easily sailed over on this 1st attempt! He then passed to 14′ and easily cleared on 2nd attempt. Having won the meet at 14′ he moved the bar another foot to 15′ and again easily cleared on 2nd attempt. He made 3 attempts at 15’6″ but failed to clear. It was a very solid meet and he performed fantastically! It was nice to break the streak of regional nightmares.

The last time BA traveled to Ponca City for regionals we had a very good outcome. Dalton Phulps, Chase Snider, and Austin Hanoch swept the pole vault competition going 1-2-3. Six years later in 2019, Broken Arrow vaulters again swept regionals, with Brandon, Weston Hulse, and Crayton Shaw going 1-2-3!

On Sunday, following The Park Church of Christ’s “Achieving New Heights” sermon by Mitch Wilburn, Brandon and I grabbed a quick lunch, loaded up the poles and headed to Fayetteville, Arkansas.

We arrived at Fayetteville High School’s vault facility and spent the afternoon vaulting with fellow vaulter and friend, Ryan Roark. On hand at the practice was 2008 Olympian April Steiner Bennett and Fayetteville HS coach and previous Abilene Christian star decathlete and vaulter, Greg Culp. During the vault session, Brandon easily cleared 15′ and had some really good attempts at 16′

After the practice we drove to the hotel that the University of Arkansas had reserved for us, cleaned up, and later met Arkansas Assistant Track Coach Mario Sategna in the lobby. He took us to dinner at a nearby BBQ restaurant where we spent time learning about each other. It was a good evening and we enjoyed visiting with Coach Sategna.

Coaches Sategna and Bucknam, and Associate Head Coach Doug Case met us in the cafeteria for lunch where we continued our discussions about the UofA Track program. After visiting for a while, we continued the tour around campus with Matt where we were able to see the outside of the dorms, classrooms, and made a stop inside the Bud Walton Arena where basketball games are held. The lobby contains a trophy and awards area where the amazing history of Arkansas track is displayed.

And as nice as it is, they are preparing to improve it further. They are planning to build a new building at the south end to provide new locker rooms, training facilities, and coaches offices. We took a few minutes to walk around the track during practice and observe other athletes. We met the women’s renowned vault coach, Bryan Compton, and also two very famous Arkansas women vaulters, Olympic silver medalist Sandi Morris and Olympian Lexi Weeks.

We then said our goodbyes to Coach Sategna and returned home to Broken Arrow. It was a fantastic experience and Arkansas Track is tops in the country. Such a successful program. Brandon is definitely interested in UofA as one of his top choices.

On Sunday, April 28, Mitch Wilburn preached a sermon titled “Reaching New Spiritual Heights” at The Park Church of Christ in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He approached me the week before and asked if we could help him use pole vaulting as the sermon illustration. I agreed that this sounded like an interesting concept for a sermon, so we met over lunch a few days later to iron out the details.

At the end of the week Austin, Brandon, and I moved the standards and front sections of our pit from the back yard to the stage of the auditorium. Sunday morning, Mitch began his sermon and called Brandon to the stage after introducing him by showing his school record vault of 15’7″ where his teammates dog piled him on the pit afterwards. Mitch then called Austin and I to the stage, followed shortly afterward by my father, John Hanoch.

A video excerpt from the sermon can be heard below, or you can click on this link to hear the entire sermon online.

On Thursday evening at Union High School track complex, Brandon won his first Varsity Conference Title with a vault of 15’3″. This was the 4th best vault of his career despite some crazy strong swirling Oklahoma winds.

Brandon opened the competition with a 1st attempt clear of 14’0″, then his 2nd attempt clear of 14’6″ won the meet so he moved the bar to 15’3″ and had an easy clearance on 1st attempt. At 15’3″ he was using his 14’6″ 200lb 5.1 flex pole. He then moved the bar to 15’9″ but failed to clear, struggling with the strong swirling winds that had been building in intensity over the competition.

On Friday, April 19, at the John Jacobs Invitational, Brandon had one of those days when everything seems to go wrong. It was a very windy day with a 20-30mph tailwind out of the north. While Brandon was waiting for the bar to reach his starting height of 14′, the wind blew something into his eye causing it to hurt and tear up… he tried removing and cleaning his contact lens and also flushed the eye with saline and eye drops, which helped a little but did not completely take away the tears or pain. Only three other vaulters were still left in the competition at 14′. On Brandon’s first attempt, the strong tailwind suddenly gusted from the west right as he was dropping the pole into the box. The pole missed the box due to the smaller opening of the box collar and bounced into the base of the pit. Of course this has the effect of unexpectedly raising your grip by 8-12 inches in the middle of the vault and never ends well!  Luckily Brandon recovered well and managed to stay on his feet avoiding injury as he was rejected back to the runway. 

His 2nd attempt was better but he blew through his pole. He was able to finally clear on his 3rd attempt.  The bar went to 14’6″ and Brandon cleared easily on his 1st attempt.

The remaining competitors failed to clear, giving Brandon his first ever win at the John Jacobs Invitational. Brandon decided to put the bar at 15’1″ and his pole was too soft on his 1st attempt. He went up poles on his 2nd attempt, but as he was running down the runway, the plastic soles of his spikes separated from the rest of the shoe causing him to run through. For his 3rd attempt he borrowed a pair of spikes from his teammate, but failed to clear the bar.

What a crazy day it was! But he won the meet and took home the really cool John Jacobs Wrist Watch as his award.

We traveled to Jonesboro, AR on the afternoon of Saturday, April 13th, so that we could begin our visit at noon on Sunday.  As luck would have it, the weather did not cooperate with us… we had to drive through heavy rain and high gusty winds the entire 6 hour drive.

On Sunday morning, we were able to attend worship service at the Southwest Church of Christ in Jonesboro before meeting up with Assistant Coach Matt Vining.  He took us to lunch where we met up with ASU student-athlete hosts, pole vaulters Michael Carr and Nada Buntic.  We had a great meal and it was nice getting to know Michael and Nada.  After lunch, Coach Vining took us to the campus where we were able to see many of the different buildings such as the student union and library.  We stopped by the track and had a short visit with Coach Vining in his office, were he told us about himself and his coaching philosophy, and gave us an idea of what it would be like working with him at ASU. We were also able to see the indoor practice facility where they setup the vault pit during the indoor season. 

The afternoon tour continued with us making our way back to the track where we were able to tour the locker room and Brandon was able to try on an ASU uniform.

There were pictures of previous ASU track stars on the walls leading upstairs to the track offices and I happened to see the picture of one of my friends and former competitors, NCAA national champion, Kelly Riley.

Later that evening, we went to a Hibachi Japanese steakhouse for dinner and were joined by other members of Coach Vining’s team.  The athletes told the wait staff that it was Brandon’s birthday (even though it wasn’t) and they brought out a desert with a candle and sang happy birthday to him.  After dinner, Brandon went out with his host for the evening where they got to bowl and have a visit to the dorm rooms to see what dorm life would be like.

Monday morning, Coach Vining picked us up at the hotel and took us to meet with Nate Carr, the athletic academic coordinator to go over the degree choices and services they provide to keep athletes on track to graduate. We then toured the training facility, and weight room (which will be moving soon), and then drove the short trip to visit Earl Bell’s facility just outside of Jonesboro.  Unfortunately Earl was not able to meet with us that day.  It was pretty cool getting to see all the signatures on the wall of vaulters who have PR’d at Earl’s facility.  We saw some pretty famous names on the wall. We traveled back to the track so that we could sit down and visit with Head Coach Jim Patchell. We had a good discussion and then met back up with the group and had lunch at a local taco restaurant. Our final activity was to meet back at the track to observe the vaulters practice. It was an awesome day… nice tailwind, sunny clear skies… warm temperatures… perfect day to vault. After the practice, we loaded into the van and made the return tip home. It was a great experience and we learned so much about Arkansas State University and their track program. A big thanks to Coach Vining and Patchell, and especially to the athlete-hosts, Michael and Nada. Everyone was very welcoming and made us all feel like a part of the team.