Joe Dial Vaulted To NCAA History

Joe Dial of Oklahoma State was eagerly looking forward to the 1985 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships.

“Austin is one of my favorite places to jump – like Manhattan is now,” Dial told Don Steffens for Track & Field News in mid-May.

Manhattan – as in Manhattan, Kansas, site of the Big Eight Championships, where Dial had just become the first collegian to clear 19 feet (5.79m). But Dial wasn’t even done, continuing that day to scale an American record of 5.83m (19-1½).

In Austin, Dial was predictably the favorite, but the field turned out to be the deepest yet in meet history and Dial actually needed to better the meet record twice to seal up the victory in his final collegiate competition.

Baylor’s Todd Cooper and Fresno State’s Doug Fraley followed Dial over the first meet-record height of 5.56m (18-2¾) – a notch higher than the MR that Dial had helped set in previous years (along with two other vaulters). Only Dial could negotiate the next height of 5.64m (18-6) for the win.

A total of seven vaulters cleared 18 feet or better to smash the meet’s previous best collection of three set in 1983. An NCAA meet would not have more over that barrier until 1991 saw eight over 18.

Dial’s achievements in the pole vault began as a high schooler in Marlow, Oklahoma. In 1981 he famously became the first prep to clear 18 feet.

As a post-collegian, Dial would set an indoor world best – 5.91m (19-4¾) in 1986. The last of his eight outdoor American records – 5.96m (19-6½) in 1987 – would last seven years, the longest duration for a pole vault AR since the nearly 15 years of Dutch Warmerdam’s last record in 1942.

After retiring from competition in 1992, Dial became a full-time coach – and since 1994, has led the programs at Oral Roberts. One of his pupils – Jack Whitt in 2012 – won the NCAA pole vault title.