UND Pole Vaulter Kyley Foster Soars On and Off the Track

GRAND FORKS, N.D. — “When I stand on the runway everything else just disappears,” UND pole vaulter Kyley Foster explained. “I mean the run, the jump, the swing, you don’t even think about it once it’s happening, but my favorite part is when you’re falling.”

For Foster, her adrenaline is at an all-time high when shes plummeting her way down.

“So you know you’ve cleared a bar and you’ll see people celebrating on the way down, that’s probably the best feeling cause at that point your work is done, now you get to celebrate and it’s that free fall kind of feeling, which is my favorite part,” Foster said.

But as much as Kyley enjoys the fall, her coach would argue his favorite part of having the junior, Detroit Lakes native on board his squad, would be how quickly she’s been able to soar.

“She was a walk on her freshman year, and so we didn’t have a ton of expectation,” track and field assistant coach Joe Silvers said. “This is a gal that we hope will develop into someone that could one day be a scorer for us and then her freshman year she just took off.”

Foster set the school record after clearing just over 12 feet 6 inches as a freshman. That year she took third-place at the Big Sky Conference Indoor Championship and then as a sophomore she broke her own school record again.

“She did jump a school record,” Silvers said. “She jumped 13 feet 3.75 inches and that was good enough to qualify her for the first round of the NCAA national meet.”

But as high as she was flying on the track, she was flying even higher off of it.

“I decided that I was going to pursue commercial aviation,” Foster said. ” I took my first flight up and the doors were open. It was sunny and beautiful in September and it was the most fantastic thing ever. I think I had a smile on my face the entire time that I was flying and so then I was really hooked at that point.”

That passion drove Foster to get her private license, instrument rating, and commercial license all in under three years. So as much of a rush as it is to vault 13 feet, she’s even more excited when thousands of feet in the sky.

“It’s really freeing,” Foster explained. “You realize how small everything else is when you are up in the sky and you look around. Even flying 30,000 feet and you look down and you can’t see anything. It is definitely a thrill when you are the only one flying the air craft and you’re like ‘wow I’m literally flying a helicopter up in the sky, by myself.’ It’s a thrill for sure.”

And as it turns out, Foster may have been destined to fly her entire life.

“My godfather worked in the air force and he was a helicopter pilot and I envied him when I was a little girl,”Foster said. “I wanted to be just like him. I would wear his aviators and we would go on family vacations and I loved flying. I was the kid that stared out the window the whole time.”

So now that Foster has grown to love both types of flying, she’s also found they may not be so different in other ways too.

“For me it’s still that full-focused moment when you are trying to learn a new maneuver,”Foster said. “You have smaller scales to do it better every time, so they’re really similar in that sense. Every time you pole vault you want to get better and better, every time you’re flying you want to get better and better and better.”

As she continues pursuing both passions, her goal is to keep reaching new heights.

“[Personal record] every meet is the goal every time,” said Foster. “With helicopter it’s to be a CFI, so I want to be a certified flying instructor. That’s my new goal, so I’ll work towards that course and then I’ll be able to instruct students and teach them how to fly and then from there work my way up and hopefully get into EMS for helicopter.”

But whatever Foster chooses to do next, the sky is certainly the limit.