How much pain is too much to handle? Ben Skellenger, a 2024 Lodi High School graduate, can take just about a full house of pain. As a sophomore he pole vaulted through a grade four stress fracture in his shin.
But that’s not the only instance of him jumping through an injury.
During gym class he tore two ligaments dunking a basketball on a left wrist he’d banged up playing soccer two days beforehand. In his 2024 track and field season he powered through recovering from a wrist surgery just a few months prior in December.
The surgery fixed up the two torn ligaments and removed a nerve in his wrist. The season before, the same wrist had been tweaked but never evaluated.
“The slip in gym class is what really did it in,” his dad Randy Skellenger said. “They think there could have been some pre-existing issues that were caused from the year before.”
The road to recovery began with rehab a month and a half before his senior season and dragged into it. Ben worked hard to get his left wrist back to where it needed to be in order to pole vault again as they entered the outdoor season.
“A lot of getting the motion back and the strength back. Trying mainly to get the flexibility of it back first before strengthening it,” Ben Skellenger said.
The UW-Eau Claire track commit needed to get his wrist back to where it needed to be in order to make a return to the WIAA state meet.
“It was his left hand, that’s the power hand in pole vault as far as pushing the pole out away from you,” Randy said. “That lower hand really takes a lot of force at the plant of the vault, and then the swing through off it as well, pushing the pole out while it’s bending.”
Ben’s rehab went well enough to get him back to competing a few weeks into the season, although he returned with a new run up.
“It was like a three-step approach, and then a couple weeks later a four step approach, then a couple weeks later a fifth,” Randy said.
Even with a new approach, Ben was back in action thanks to his hard work of rehabbing his wrist every night. Gaining his confidence was a hurdle in the journey as well.
“It was a lot of nervousness about re-tweaking it,” Ben said. “It was mainly getting my confidence back that I could really jump into my wrist, full speed, and not have it give out on me.”
After a few weeks and a few meets Ben was back to the confident standout competitor that Randy has known him to be. In addition to being his dad Randy is also a coach on the Lodi track team.
“First and foremost you’re more worried about your kid’s health, less so about rushing back into things,” Randy said. “But then the coach side and the teammate aspect, there’s kind of like, well you’re able to sprint and you’re able to do these things, so how come we can’t get you back vaulting yet?”
Until he couldn’t sprint anymore. At the beginning of the season he pulled his hamstring, holding him out for about a month. He tweaked it again at the conference meet, putting an end to his leg of 4x100 and 4x4oo relays.
Despite the bad hamstring, the wrist that still lacks full flexibility to this day and the shortened approach, Ben made it back to the state tournament.
“It felt good getting [to state],” Ben said. “It wasn’t 100 percent positive that I was going to get fully back into that spot again, so it was nice getting back there.”
At the state meet in La Crosse Ben vaulted 13 feet, showing great improvement from his first meet of the season when he went 10 and a half feet.
While Ben did not medal, against a notably strong pole vaulting field, Ben was still able to make the best of a season that was not too far from being lost.
Randy and Ben went from hoping he would have a few weeks of a season, to competing at state. Not to mention that Ben will get to continue his athletic career.
“Being able to go off to college and pick up where you left off, I think that that’s pretty sweet,” Randy said of Ben’s upcoming future as a student athlete at UW-Eau Claire. “To be able to have those opportunities and not be able to just shut it down and just say, well, career as a pole vaulter is over.”
At Eau Claire Ben will pole vault, and he hopes he won’t have to test his pain tolerance anymore.
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Ben (pole vaulter):
“I was not 100 percent by the beginning, it was like a month into it I’d say.”
“I wasn’t full vaulting for three weeks after the season started. Started with short approaches, then working back into a full.”
Lifted, worked out, lower body work for speed (brace on for three months) “a lot of explosive work.”
“It was a lot of [getting confidence back] at the start. Getting back into it I didn’t have complete trust in it that it was going to hold up right away…… I’d probably say I didn’t have full confidence in it for the first three or four meets into the season, then after that I really started giving it more pressure in the vault. It was a good while before I got full confidence back going into my wrist.”
At home rehabbed in evening 30-60 minutes for wrist to strengthen and flexibility each day, heat was helpful, ice and heat – had to keep working to keep it up
Still improving and PRing from last year but it felt like what I did at State could’ve been better if I didn’t hurt my wrist because I was still improving by the end of the season. So if I just had more time and less stuff that held me back I could have done better but being able to get back felt good.”
Dad (and coach) Randy:
“Sitting back and watching from a distance, because I would get nervous watching it. Seeing any flaws or weaknesses with the hamstring or the wrist were things that just scared me. The easiest thing for me was to do was watch from a distance, not dwell on the minutiae as much.”
Other coaches have said they’re proud of him for getting through meets, PRing four weeks into outdoor
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