WALWORTH, Wis.—When Kaden Rambatt first entered the world of pole vaulting he was simply trying to outdo his older brother.
The Big Foot High School senior blew the family competition out of the water, and he is now entering the home stretch of his prep career better than almost everybody in the state of Wisconsin.
“My oldest brother chose to do (pole vaulting) his freshman year of high school,” Rambatt said. “He ended up getting the school record, so I kind of just had to be better than him. I started in the spring of fourth grade, when my middle brother started doing it his sophomore year of high school, and I’ve been doing it every year ever since.”
And once Rambatt entered high school, he completely dominated the field. There are only two instances where he hasn’t placed first: the 2021 and 2022 WIAA D2 State Outdoor Track & Field Championships.
Of course, pole vaulting is in his blood. His father, Dan, was one at Big Foot High. His older brother, Kyle, broke the school mark with his height of 13-feet, 6-inches, as Kaden mentioned, and his brother Trevor is on the school’s all-time leaderboard too.
Dan coaches the pole vaulters on the Chiefs’ track and field team, and he had to admit the journey with his sons has been special.
“It’s been really, really fun,” he said. “I’m really proud of all that they’ve done. It’s just a great feeling to be able to be with each of them through this whole experience and watch them grow.”
But Kaden made it clear that their father never forced the sport upon them.
“It was more like ‘Hey, you want to come? Sure,’” he said. “It was more about me having fun.”
“I just wanted to make sure it was fun for them,” Dan said. “(It was about) just letting them go and progress on their own. And then early in their high school careers, we started pushing them a little bit to make sure they were advancing but not too fast. And Kaden’s come along real well.”
“Real well” might be an understatement.
Kaden won his third-consecutive Wisconsin State Indoor Track & Field Championship title, soaring to a height of 15’ 6”. He then set a new PR at the Clinton Relays when he went up to 16’ 1”, a mark that helped him win by over five feet, is seven inches higher than his previous PR, ranks third all time in Wisconsin and is 22nd nationally in the outdoor season.
And that mark came after he had recorded a height of 16’ 3” during a preseason meet down in Illinois in December.
“It’s almost like every height is a little bit of a learning curve as far as moving with the pole and timing with the pole,” Dan said. “He’s achieving heights with the lower hand grip. He’s jumping 16’ 3” with a 15-foot pole but with a 14’ 6” hand grip, so that’s a pretty good extension off the top of his pole.”
The hand grip of a pole vaulter is measured from the top of the hand to the bottom of the tip of the pole, and it affects every aspect of the sport from how fast you can run to the amount of power you possess getting shot off the top.
“I got him to do that at an early age without knowing it,” Dan said about Kaden’s higher grip. “This year, we’re still trying to get the higher hand heights so that he can progress up higher.”
Kaden added that he has been achieving greater heights by focusing on staying athletic.
“It’s a lot of maintenance stuff,” the senior said. “I’ll keep doing my sprinting and I’ll do the 100 and 200 (races) in meets. We do a lot of bars to simulate basically what a meet is so I can have that mindset of ‘Okay, this is exactly what a meets going to be like,’ and I can prepare for that.”
“Kaden’s been doing it for so long,” Dan said. “He’s got a feel for it and he understands it completely. Every aspect of it from the approach to the takeoff to the top end to extending it up there, he understands it. And that’s just years of doing it.”
Kaden broke his brother Kyle’s school record at the WIAA Division 2 Regional hosted at Brodhead High School his freshman year. He won sectionals and placed second at state with a height of 14’ 3” despite starting the year with a quad injury.
The vaulter tore through his sophomore season, repeating first-place finishes at regionals and sectionals, before finishing fourth (14’ 3”) at state in what Kaden described as “an off-day for everybody.”
“All my poles got softer so I couldn’t move them or I moved them too easily,” he added. “I just couldn’t get the push off the pole to get up. It was just really weird, the numbers weren’t that great that day.”
So, it made it all the more satisfying when Kaden broke the WIAA State Championships record his junior season with a height of 15’ 2”.
“I wasn’t really worried,” he said. “I figured I was going to place first just because of the way seedings were. When we got to the record (attempt), I had the same issue as sophomore year where all the poles got softer. So I had to make sure I didn’t get in my head where it’s like ‘Oh no, can I actually do this?’ I just had to keep a level head and take deep breaths. I made that state record on my third attempt, and the height like that is scary, but I pulled through.”
And Kaden has his eyes set on even greater heights.
“The goal is 17-feet,” he said. “I know I can do it, it’s just a matter of when.”
Rambatt and the Chiefs will next compete at the Beloit Daily News Invitational on Friday, which will be hosted at Beloit Turner High School and kicks off at 4:30 p.m.
Badger swept the boys and girls’ titles last year and this year’s lineup also includes: Turner, Brodhead/Juda, Clinton, Delavan-Darien, East Troy, The Home School Eagles, Monticello, Palmyra-Eagle, Parkview and North Boone.
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