Ally Neiders: The Last to Believe

By Tim Reilly

This gifted athlete first came to me as a tired level 8 gymnast in the summer before her 8th grade year. Ally took to pole vault like she was created for the event. I told her mom I saw the best 8th grader in the USA within 12 months, and Ally proved me right. She won gold at the Junior Olympics that summer with an 11’3 PR; won again indoors at Ocean Breeze in the 15-16 year age group; and won the freshman bracket at New Balance in Greensboro 6 months later with 12’9, a best for her. Prophetically, among impressed fans she met that day was Duke vault coach Shawn Wilbourn, who said he looked forward to reaching out to her in a couple of years. Ally quit gymnastics, engaged speed and lifting coaches for days not vaulting, and appeared to have launched a charmed career without limits.

But who arrives at greatness with a straight, easy path?

As Ally entered her sophomore year with a 13’ PR, she came to her first plateau of jumping progress and needed to rebuild her takeoff. This felt like regression to her. By spring, Covid struck down all league and national meets, and the stagnation became oppressive. Fifteen months without improved marks can be desolating. What if I’ve peaked? What will colleges think? My family expects much of me. I feel like I’m disappointing them every day. It became clear to me that this charmed success story could be derailed if we didn’t de-emphasize the vaulting and place daily and weekly gains on the mental side as primary.

Photo of Ally provided by Tim Reilly

As usual, Ally and her family were all in. The first beam of light shot through and freed her to jump a 13’6 PR in January of last year. The solitary goal that day was to jump for herself, and a huge load was lifted from her shoulders. Then in her limited outdoor season she carried her school team as sprinter and improved her PR to 13’9. Finally, she arrived at the NSAF Championships in Eugene with rekindled passion just one week after watching the Olympic Trials there. For the first time, she broke the 14’ barrier and won a national silver with teammates Hana and Amanda Moll sharing the podium on either side of her. Two weeks later they all made 14’ again and were the first ever high school trio to top 14’ in the same meet. And more than this, thousands of miles away, Ally was also making headlines in other national news. Since she has dual citizenship in Latvia, she was now breaking their all-time national records for females of any age. She may very well represent them in Paris and beyond.

Because of her 4.0+ academic achievement, she was recruited frenetically by Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, the University of Washington and Duke, which she visited last. She felt sure she would be returning to join Toby Stevenson at the UW, but a combination of mind-boggling student-athlete support services, training facilities, training partner Paige Sommers, meetings with Shawn about both NCAA and Olympic pursuits and a restless stirring to venture away from Seattle, Ally was awash in certainty that this would be her home.

Coach Wilbourn said, “Ally impressed me with her speed and athletic ability years ago, but when I came to watch her practice this summer, I became convinced she had what it takes to excel at the next level. She is one of those vaulters that hits the box with a lot of power, and that’s hard to teach. I believe she will be one of the best at the NCAA level.”

It has been a joy and privilege to watch the years of disciplined training morph this girl into a specimen of a vaulter my posse of coaching friends have all said is the most certain Diamond Leaguer they have ever seen at 17 years old.

It’s crazy to think Ally was the last to believe it.