Hannah Sempf balances running with flying high in the pole vault

Pole vaulting is an art — athletes need to be strong and spend hours building the muscle memory and technique required to clear the bar while flying through the air.

When it all comes together, a good pole vaulter makes it look easy, even though it’s far from it.

Hannah Sempf is one of those athletes.

“It’s just really rewarding getting over the bars,” Sempf said Thursday. “It’s like a physical achievement. You made it over the bar — even though sometimes you don’t — but when you do it’s great.”

Though the 5-foot-10 Columbia Falls senior is primarily known for her distance running prowess, that wasn’t always the case.

Sempf stuck to field events only her freshman year — high jump, long jump, pole vault and the like. Not a lot of running aside from relays, though coach Jamie Heinz and staff tried their best to convince her to spend more time on it.

“She was a great high jumper,” Heinz said. “She was a great triple jumper and she was a great pole vaulter… She was really good in those events. But she started running and found out that (while) she’s competitive in those other events, she was, like, outstanding as a distance runner.”

It was the summer after her freshman year in 2019 when Sempf started running and she soon began to realize she could do something with it.

“She wasn’t going to go out for cross country,” Jim Peacock, head cross country coach and assistant track coach, said. “A bunch of her friends were trying to talk her into it cause she had friends on the team and she ended up deciding days before the season started that she’d give it a try. Her little sister (Ally) was a stud junior high cross country runner, and she always thought that she wasn’t good and her sister had all of the talent. It turns out they both were good.”

In her second year running cross country in the fall of 2020, she edged teammate Lara Erickson for third at the State A meet.

“I still remember her crying on her first day of cross country practice and struggling to get through a run and going from that to being a pretty darn good contributor to our varsity and having a really good sophomore cross country season,” Peacock said.

Last fall, Sempf was in the top three in every meet she competed in with the exception of one, and then not only won the State A crown but helped Columbia Falls win its first-ever girls state title. She was also All-State for cross country. Not bad for a girl who thought her younger sister was the faster one in the family.

“I didn’t think I was fast until my junior year honestly,” Sempf said. “I’ve always thought she was faster than me, and she is kind of in sprint sometimes.”

Sempf now runs the 800, 1,600, and 3,200-meter distances during outdoor track season, and of course she stuck with pole vaulting. There was no way she was going to give that up.

“My junior year I came back and that was once I had done cross country for a year,” Sempf said. “So I was like, ‘Okay, I’m a distance runner now, but I love pole vault.’ So I didn’t want to stop pole vaulting.”

She cleared 10 feet, her personal best, at the Ross Pilcher Top 10 on April 26. That was the same height that earned her fifth at the state meet last year, and only Charlie Ham of Frenchtown has done better in Class A (10-6).

Distance running hasn’t come without its trials, however. For the past few years, Sempf has battled what is believed to be a vocal cord disorder (VCD) that is exacerbated by anxiety and stress. The disorder causes the vocal cords to contract and restrict the airway, making it difficult to breathe, when they should be expanding. “I don’t know exactly when it started,” Sempf said. “I think I would get it maybe like once a year when I was younger, my freshman year. And then my sophomore year, I got it for the first time in a race. I didn’t know what it was until this year. So I thought it was just like a panic attack.”

It worsened her junior year, while she felt like she was already playing catch-up to more experienced runners.

“When I came back to run track my junior year, I was already a junior and then I didn’t have any experience in the distance races so I just felt really behind and that kind of stressed me out,” Sempf said. “And then I got injured in the beginning, so I missed a few races, which made me even more behind, which made me even more tense and stressed out. And then I stepped on the track to do a race and I was already so stressed out that it just happened.”

The disorder doesn’t bother her much during cross country, but something about running track sets it off.

“Just the race anxiety after it had triggered a couple of times, which increases the problem, which amps the anxiety… It was self perpetuating,” Peacock said.

It wasn’t until this year that Sempf, along with Peacock and Heinz discovered a possible diagnosis.

“She’s trying to figure out how to deal with that and not get discouraged at the same time because she knows she knows that she’s probably (one of the) best distance runners in Class A,” Heinz said.

Sempf has worked through it with therapy and some sports psychology. Being able to put a name to something that has bothered her for years is a relief.

“It’s a lot better knowing now exactly what it is, but I still have that traumatic experience with track,” Sempf said. “So I still have to deal with that.”

Sempf made an early commitment to Carroll College, where she’ll compete in cross-country and track and field for the Saints, and wants to major in elementary education.

Next up for Columbia Falls is the ARM Meet in Whitefish on Saturday.