TRACK & FIELD | Pole vaulting helps Maurepas' Kameron Aime find his path

Sometimes it takes a bit of time to find a path in life. As it stands now, Maurepas’ Kameron Aime started his as a sixth-grader.

That’s the first time he learned to pole vault, and he’s only gotten better, reaching new heights as a three-time state champion, and traveling across the country in an effort to get better and help grow the sport.

It's a path he likely didn't see coming when he first started out.

“I didn’t really know what I wanted to do,” Aime said. “My coach (former Maurepas track coach Jeff Garland) thought that I looked like I could do pole vaulting.”

Aime attended an eight-hour clinic on the sport in Walker, and he was hooked.

“That was when I first learned how to vault,” Aime said. “I stayed there and that was the first day that I feel in love with it. I knew that this was something that I wanted to do, and I wanted to stay doing it.”

It helped that Aime’s cousin, Trevin Burns, was also a pole vaulter and was training with Erica Fraley, who made the 2008 Olympic team. Aime began training with her as well.

At first sight, Fraley said she figured it would take some work to get Aime where he needed to be.

“He really was not physically good enough to pole vault yet,” Erica Fraley said. “He was small. He was skinny, and weak, but he could pole vault well enough to score points.”

Aime said he was still finding his way.

“I wasn’t really thinking anything of like, ‘Oh, I want to be great at this one day.’ I wasn’t thinking about that at all. I thought that the act of pole vaulting and learning about pole vaulting was just fun. I went to practice, but it didn’t seem like practice. It just seemed liked two hours of fun in my life. That’s how it was. You keep practicing and you slowly get better.”

That’s exactly what happened.

Aime hit 8 feet, 4 ¾ inches in his first year at outdoor nationals in Humble, Texas, competing in 13-14-year-old division.

As a seventh-grader, Aime made it to his first state outdoor meet, but at that point, it was just a way to extend the season in his mind.

“I made it past regionals, I’m like, ‘Yes. I’ve got another meet to go to. It’s not the end of my outdoor season,”’ he said. “I got there and I was just expecting to do whatever I could do.”

Aime went into the meet with the goal of surpassing the Maurepas junior high record of 9-6, which was held by his cousin, Burns, who won the event that year.

“That was my goal, and I actually ended up PRing (personal record) and jumping 10 feet that day,” Aime said. “I tied for fourth but lost by misses.”

The next year, Aime won his first state championship, clearing 11 feet as an eighth-grader in Class C. Since then, Aime has dominated at the state meet, claiming another Class C title as a freshman with a mark of 13-6 and a Class B title last season as a sophomore with a then-personal best of 15 feet.

Fraley said Aime’s willingness to learn the ins-and-outs of pole vaulting have been the key to his development.

“As he learned more about it, he really got into the how and the why about it – not just go and try to do something, but learn about what it is he was trying to do,” she said. “He’s been one of my more studious athletes as far as studying the sport.”

As a freshman, Aime also began competing in indoor meets at LSU’s Carl Maddox Fieldhouse.

“The biggest difference for me was knowing that I only had a limited amount of these indoor meets,” Aime said of the indoor meets. “There’s way less indoor meets, and it was a place where the conditions are perfect. There’s nothing that can mess you up, and it’s like you don’t want to waste the chance of being there. It’s a great place to be in. There’s people cheering you on, and you don’t want it to just go to waste. You want to do something great there.”

Over the years, Aime’s goals have changed as well. He finished second in the pole vault at February’s state indoor meet and he hasn’t forgotten it. Without being prompted, Aime knows he was beaten by Nicholas Russell of Catholic High New Iberia as well as Russell’s winning mark (16-4 ¾).

“There’s always somebody that I want to be standing with,” Aime said. “I don’t want to be below.”

He also didn’t realize how well he was faring in pole vaulting until a friend brought something to his attention.

“It wasn’t until one of my friends mentioned something about national rankings, and then that I was on one of them,” Aime said. “I was like, ‘Oh, I’m nationally ranked …? I didn’t know they existed.’”

Aime has attended meets all over the country, including the National Pole Vault Summit in Nevada and the Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays, where he and Live Oak’s Clayton Simms hit 15-9, which is second in the state high school rankings behind the 16-foot mark set by Lafayette’s Elijah Odinet.

Along the way, Aime set his sights on hitting a 16-foot jump, something he accomplished at the New Balance Nationals in New York on March 8, where he cleared 16-01.75 while competing with a hamstring injury.

“It was probably one of the most chaotic things that I’ve ever been to, but also one of the most awesome things that I’ve ever been to,” Aime said. “Just to see the amount of great athletes gathered in one spot, it was just astonishing. The officials were nice. The conditions were great. They really took care of us, too.”

While Aime was able to work his way around the hamstring injury in New York, back home it was much more tricky during the Livingston Parish Championships, where he won the small schools pole vault with a mark of 14 feet and finished third in the triple jump (34-2) and second in the long jump (16-10 ½).

“At the time, I was still trying to figure out how this injury exactly worked, so I ended up doing long jump and triple jump before the pole vault, and in between those events, I let my tendons, where I have tendinitis get cooled down,” Aime said. “Then I tried to warm it back up again, and tendonitis doesn’t work like that. You get one chance per day. Warm it up and keep it warm and do what you have to do and then let it cool down.”

Maurepas coach Jake Bourgeois said the original plan was to also have Aime run a leg on the team’s 4x100 relay team, but he said Aime will likely focus solely on pole vault for the remainder of the season.

“What’s great about Kameron is his self-motivation and his drive and love for pole-vaulting,” Bourgeois said. “He wants to be the best at it. He wants to be the best in the state, and he wants to be the best in the country. He’s all about his pole vaulting. He loves it. He competes with himself. He pushes himself.”

Aime said the goal is to be at full strength for the state meet.

“It’s not something that can’t be dealt with, but it is going to take a lot of time to heal, especially now that I’m in midseason, but it’s not something that I can’t deal with and at least try to jump through,” Aime said of the injury.

While bettering his own marks is one goal Aime has, he’s also set a long-range one for himself – and he already knows where he has to be in order to get there.

“My ultimate goal is to qualify for the Olympics,” Aime said. “There’s a lot of work I’m going to have to do to be able to get there. The Olympic standard as of now is 5.70 meters, which is 18-8. I could tell you the Olympic record right now, it’s 6.03 meters.”

Fraley, who made the Olympics at age 28, said there are many variables in terms of getting to that level of competition, including a person’s career path, family and education goals.

“How much do you care about it? How dedicated are you? How many other things are you willing to sacrifice to chase that dream?,” Fraley asked. “There are some kids that you know right off the bat that they have talent and they are going to have an easier path sometimes than other kids, and Kameron was not one of those. He’s one that has been consistently putting in the hard work to get better for a long time, and that’s ultimately what it takes in the long run is someone who will continue to put in the hard work consistently, so for him, he has that foundation.”

Aime said he has his college choices narrowed to LSU and Louisiana Tech, and Fraley said that’s an excellent start.

“What I do know is that he’s going to be able to go to college and be a good college vaulter and be able to compete at a high level in a college program, and that is the next stepping stone,” Fraley said. “Without being able to do that, you don’t get a look beyond that …

“My job is to help kids figure out where pole vault fits in their lives and make quality choices in where they want to go with it but try not to over-plan the future because usually God has a way of showing where he wants you to go instead of you being able to plan it out perfectly for yourself.”

Aime said there’s another layer to his pole-vaulting career that’s focused on giving back and helping others learn about the sport. It’s rooted in some of the down time he’s had while waiting to enter competitions before the bar gets to his starting mark.

“I like to help out the competition --- technique, catching marks, adjusting standards …,” he said. “I try to just have a great time with the guys that are out there. That’s just how pole vault is, though. We’re probably the nicest people that you’ll meet.”

He’s turned that into a coaching career as he helps Fraley as a junior coach at clinics she puts on. Fraley said it fits Aime, who is a 4.0 student, perfectly.

“It’s been said that the pole vault is a professor’s sport in that you have to know what you’re doing and you have to have intelligence about it, and Kameron definitely fits that mold,” Fraley said. “I think it makes him love it even more than he would otherwise.”

“His knowledge of the event is really vast, and not just the technical part of it, but the history of who’s competed and the process they went through,” she continued. “He’s able to help coach other kids now also because of his knowledge. He’s not afraid to tell you that he knows a lot about pole vault.”

It’s just another layer to the sport that Aime is glad to take on after also being mentored by Southeastern Louisiana pole vaulter Devin King, whom he calls role model.

“I try to encourage people to pole vault just for the benefit of making pole vault a bigger and better sport,” Aime said. “We’re trying to raise awareness for pole vault because it’s such a great sport.”

Aime won’t graduate until next year, but there’s already someone in place to take over the pole vaulting spot at Maurepas – Aime’s younger sister Madeline, who is an eighth-grader.

“I help her out as much as I can – definitely at meets,” Kameron Aime said. “Most of the coaching, I leave to Erica (Fraley) though. She did a great job with me, so I want Maddie to have the same thing.”

In the meantime, Kameron Aime will continue competing and bringing pole vaulting some attention.

“I’ve always loved the history of the sport and the fact that it’s not a big sport like basketball or baseball,” Aime said. “It’s not mainstream, and not everybody knows about it. If you do pole vaulting, it’s like, ‘Whoa, you do that thing where you fly in the air with the pole?’ It’s unique. That’s really what it boils down to – that pole vaulting is unique. It takes a very special individual to excel in the pole vault.”

Right now, Aime is doing his part.