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.