Courtney McQuaide knows a thing or two about doing something she doesn’t necessarily want to do. Whether it’s hauling bird feed on her family’s farm in Saltsburg or dealing with nagging ankle or back issues, McQuaide said that in her mind, she has no choice but to power through it.
That type of mentality is what helped the Greensburg Salem grad heave herself to becoming the first female at Slippery Rock to earn an NCAA Division II national championship in pole vault this past track season.
“It’s just a lot of body and mental toughness, just kind of being willing to the drills over and over again,” McQuaide told DKPittsburghSports.com. “A lot of people get bored with them. Most athletes will avoid drills they aren't good at, but our coach stresses that if you're not great at them then you need to work on it.”
And McQuaide has been working her whole life.
Growing up on a 96-acre farm that specializes in raising pheasants and hunting dogs, McQuaide was taught early on about putting in an honest day’s work. The work was hard. But you didn’t have a choice — you had to do it.
But when she wasn’t tending to the animals, McQuaide found herself on the gymnastics mats, working to develop some type of athleticism that she wouldn’t get from chucking a bag of bird feed around.
Gymnastics led her and a few friends to checking out track and field during her eighth grade year. It was something, admittedly, that she didn’t even really care for at the time. But the coach made a pitch, anyway.
“A coach came up and said I should try pole vault, because I had broad shoulders and said I had the right body type,” McQuaide said of the chance encounter.
The coach talked to her mom afterward and the rest is history.
Despite being an All-State selection and earning the title of Outstanding Female Athlete in high school, McQuaide said her vaulting skills needed plenty of work when she was deciding to do the event in college.
Originally, McQuaide was looking at West Virginia and Akron, not even considering Slippery Rock. But her coach talked her into taking a visit, she loved the campus and the coaching staff there and she signed on.
That’s when the real work began on breaking her bad habits.
“Coming into college, I was pretty raw with pole vault,” she said. “I went to camps before my senior year, but my approach was really bad. I didn't know how to plant and it was only about two years ago that I really knew how to carry the pole.”
The right way, she said, has everything to do with controlling your rhythm.
“You have to hit the same mark and steps every time when you take off,” she said.
To get it right, the team does a lot of high bar workouts to mimic the inversion of the pole vault.
“That's where a lot of athletes get stuck,” McQuaid said. “They try to get used down and get stuck in an L position.”
Even with breaking those habits, McQuaide earned All-Region honors as a freshman, vaulting a season-high 3.68 meters during the indoor season. During the outdoor season, she qualified for the D-II Track and Field Championships and placed 16th.
Things were looking up as she headed into her sophomore season, but the 2016 indoor track season started with an unexpected setback.
McQuaide went for a vault, cleared the bar and landed in the pit. That’s when her ankle turned.
“I landed in the pit and my foot was turned sideways,” she said. “I said, ‘Well, it’s not supposed to look like that.’”
McQuaide attempted to finish the meet with sheer adrenaline, she said.
“It swelled up pretty bad at that point,” she admitted.
She made the trip to a hospital, where the doctor there told her nothing was broken. But she knew something wasn’t right, so she sought a second opinion. The second doctor made her stand on it and she began to feel lightheaded, she said.
“They told me it was shattered,” she remembered.
She had surgery on the ankle about three weeks later and was put in a walking boot eight weeks after surgery.
The injury, she said, was a blessing in disguise.
“At first I was super upset, but looking back, taking time off while being injured it was probably one of the best things that happened with me,” she said. “For my form and my runs, they were so much better this year. I think it kind of helped me a lot.”
The comeback trail for McQuaide began with the 2016-17 indoor season. She competed in seven meets. She finished in the top five in five of those, placing first in three of them in pole vault.
On the surface, she was back. But there were plenty of internal miscues, she said. She wasn’t as fast after the injury and she felt insecure about it. But her results didn’t seem to suffer. It was then that she realized that if she worked to perfect her form, she could reach new heights.
With her new philosophy, she recorded a season-best mark of 3.77 meters in the pole vault to place first at the PSAC Championships and placed 16th in the pole vault with a mark of 3.62 meters at the NCAA DII Championships.
During the 2017 outdoor season, McQuaide competed in eight meets. She had seven top 10 finishes with four being top-five. She recorded a career-best mark of 3.96 meters in the pole vault to place first at the PSAC Championships.
She turned around and showcased a solid 2017-18 indoor season, placing fifth at the NCAA Championships with a clearance of 3.82 meters, earning first-team All-American status.
And then she turned her sights toward the outdoor season with a feeling that her best was on its way.
Indeed it was. She chugged along, earning her way back to the NCAA Championships after becoming PSAC champion with a personal best clearance of 4.04 meters at the conference meet, the second-best result ever recorded in a PSAC championship and the fifth-best in all of Division II.
In her previous national championship appearances, McQuaide felt somewhat like she didn't belong among the nation’s best. But her confidence was in the right spot this season, she said.
“I was going there to be first-team All-American and I wasn't leaving there without it,” she said. “I thought, yeah, I can do this. That was my mentality.”
She did become a first-team All-American again that outdoor season, but she coupled that with an NCAA National Championship in the pole vault, where she cleared 3.95 meters.
“I took it one bar at a time,” McQuaide said. “I don't think that I need to make this bar so I can place fifth or something. I just take it bar by bar.”
That’s been McQuaide’s mentality all along, though. she said. She takes life bit by bit.
She chose Slippery Rock based on that, too. She was considering Akron and West Virginia, but one visit to Slippery Rock sold her. She made her decision and stuck with it, even when her freshman season on campus was a little rough, both personally and physically.
She worked her way toward a national championship with that mentality, making a goal and setting out to accomplish it heading into the final meet of the season. Though there were bumps along the road, she had a bar to clear.
She credited her coach, John Papa, for keeping her on track.
“They won’t take the credit for a lot of things,” she said. “His way is, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink. They think the athletes have the control, but he's done a lot for me. He’s believed in me from day one. He told my coach that one day I’d be a national champion.”
And when she was diagnosed with spondylolisthesics — a defect in her back that slides vertebrae back and forth if her core isn’t strong and engaged — she still worked on the farm and pushed through it.
From day one, it was instilled in McQuaide to never give up and to keep pushing.
“I think it kind of helps that I grew up on a farm. It’s just that mentality,” she said. “I love pole vaulting so its something I want to do for as long as I can. Growing up with farm work, there’s a lot you don't want to do but you get through it anyway. That’s how it is with injuries.”