ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Brynn King has a confession to make.

King compiled a list of things that she wanted to accomplish after arriving at Roberts Wesleyan University last summer.

• Break the NCAA Division II indoor pole vault record? Check.
• Earn a spot in the Olympic Trials? Check.
• Win the NCAA Division II indoor national championship? Check.
• Set the NCAA Division II outdoor record, capture the NCAA Division II outdoor championships and become a two-time All-America selection? Check, check and check.

"I had goals set for myself that I thought were pretty lofty and, honestly I didn't know if we could reach, and we kind of blew those out of the water," says King, who placed the paper in a prominent place in her room to serve as a daily reminder to stay on task. "I had to keep re-writing my goals, which has never happened for me before. I had always set pretty high goals and for me I felt like they were something that I was always chasing and not necessarily reaching, but this year I kept crossing stuff off my list."

She also added to it.

"Going to the Olympics in Paris was not on that list," King admitted. "It eventually worked its way onto that list, but that was a lot later down the road and an extremely lofty goal."

It's also one that King achieved in spectacular fashion, setting a personal record by 5 centimeters after overcoming a shaky qualifying round to earn the third and final spot on the U.S. Olympic Team for the 2024 Paris Games.

"It's almost surreal because the odds were so long," says Rick Suhr, a volunteer assistant coach at Roberts who coached his wife, Jenn, in three Olympics. "A year ago, if you asked 100 of the best pole vault experts in the United States to pick the Olympic Team, Brynn King's name is not even remotely mentioned. You don't go from jumping 13-something to making the Olympic team in a year, that just doesn't happen."

But that's exactly what the 23-year-old King did.

She went from a vaulter struggling to clear 14 feet to a surprising member of Team USA in less than a year, but in order to fully comprehend her amazing journey, you need to understand just how far she has come. 

Something to cheer about

King comes from an athletic family. Her parents, Mike and Cara, met at Duke University where Mike was a member of the Blue Devils' baseball team and Cara played on the women's soccer team.

Mike played two seasons of minor league baseball before he and Cara moved to her native Texas, entered the workforce and started a family.

Brynn followed the lead of her mother and cousins and began her sports career playing soccer at a young age, but it didn't take her mother long to realize that things were not working out.

"I, being the soccer player, talked soccer up and said 'it's so fun and this and that,' and she said, 'OK, I'll play,'" Cara says. "I was one of the coaches and we got out on the field, and it was the longest season of my life. I said to myself that I can't wait for this to be over because this kid obviously does not want to do this."

Not long after, Brynn told her mother that she wanted to try a new sport – cheerleading. A bit taken back, Cara stopped by a local gym to see if they offered cheerleading for children Brynn's age. They did and Brynn's enthusiasm soared.

"She got a trampoline and was flipping and twisting and doing fulls," Mike says. "She just kept excelling and once she got one thing, she wouldn't stop, and that's kind of what she's done with pole vault. Once she gets a little bit of success, she wants more and more and more. She'd do it 24 hours a day if she could."

King cheered for 11 years with her hometown Woodlands Elite, starting in minis and eventually competing on the Worlds team level as a flyer.

"She took it and ran with it," Cara says. "But around high school age she began to think there might be something else out there for her."

Brynn began sustaining injuries around age 10 and was looking for a change of pace, so she went out for the track and field team as a ninth grader at Concordia Lutheran High School.

"I wanted my results to be based off of my work ethic and not those of other people," she says. "I also felt kind of guilty for being hurt while on a team because I knew that other people were counting on me."

Brynn continued to cheer while competing as a sprinter in track and field. One day her coach, Jacob Vasquez, suggested that she try the long jump.

"(Vasquez) came out to me that night after practice and said, 'I had her try it a couple of times and she jumped further than anyone's ever jumped at Concordia,'" Cara recalled.

King jumped in one meet before moving on to win districts, regionals and a state championship.

"I loved it," Brynn says. "It was great, and it was way less technical than pole vault."

Love at first flight

Despite her success, King's time as a long jumper was short.

She suffered her first major injury as a high school sophomore, sustaining a labral tear in her hip that required surgery.

"The doctors told me that I may not be able to sprint again, so it was quite possibly the end of my sports career," King says. "But I came back from that quicker than they thought I could and it kind of opened new doors. All of a sudden I could run without a limp."

What King couldn't do was absorb the stress of landing in the long jump pit any longer, so she began to search for a new event. Vasquez mentioned pole vault.

"He told her that 'you're fast, you're strong and with your tumbling you have good air awareness,'" Cara says.

It was love at first flight.

"Pole vault had that adrenaline-junkie factor in it, which was perfect for me," Brynn says.

She also received early inspiration by attending a clinic featuring Jenn and Rick Suhr.

Brynn soaked in every bit of information that she could from the Suhrs and even had her picture taken with Jenn, the 2012 Olympic gold medalist.

"Most of all, I remember her being starstruck by Jenn," Cara says. "To get to meet your idol that day was amazing for her, but not only getting to meet but to jump in front of her and Rick. … I think what amazed me the most is that Jenn and Rick were there for like two hours and watched them jump and talked to them and took pictures. They were fantastic to do that much with the kids."

King, however, suffered a major setback a few months later when she tore her right ACL.

"I was devastated because I thought that was the end of the possibility of me competing in college," she says.

Showing the resilience that has become one of her trademarks, she completed her rehab and was back on the runway in six months.

Despite having a relatively late start in pole vault, King was a quick study and overcame her injury in style, clearing 13-feet, 1-inch to win the 2019 Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools outdoor championship as a senior, becoming the first girl from Texas to clear 13 feet in state competition. 

She also realized her dream of being recruited by colleges and chose to follow in her parents' cleats and attend Duke University.

'Shoebox' dreams

Hannah Kelly had never met Brynn King until she moved into a corner room on the third floor of Bassett Residence Hall, a red brick building that opened in 1926 on the main quad of Duke's East campus.

King and Kelly, a high jumper from McAllen, Texas, engaged in small talk as they prepared to become teammates and roommates.

"I asked her what her career aspriations were," recalls Kelly, who graduated from Duke with a degree in Neuroscience and is preparing to apply to medical schools.  "And she was like, 'I want to be a professional athlete, I really want to be a professional pole vaulter.'

"I was like 'OK, whatever you say, good luck with that kind of thing because it is never going to happen.' There are a million college athletes and it's very difficult to be a professional athlete."

That conversation was one of many that Kelly and King would have as they became best friends. Duke requires its students to live in residence halls for three years and Kelly and King roomed together throughout their time together in Durham.

"We literally had to share a shoebox of a room for three years when we were grown adults," Kelly says.

King experienced many highs and lows at Duke, including a second ACL tear in her right knee just before Christmas of her freshman season.

"I went to do a box jump and my knee just buckled," she says. "I was out for 11 months which felt like forever."

King followed the rehab plan and returned for her sophomore season where she set a then-personal best of 4.22 meters (13-10) while finishing fourth at the Virginia Tech Invitational during indoor season and 4.07 meters (13-4 ¼) at the NCAA East Regional during outdoor.

King's junior year was hampered by ankle pain which led to a broken foot and more surgery.

All of the injuries took their toll on King both physically and mentally, so she turned to three things that she always been able to count on: her family, her friends and her faith.

"They were pretty rough surgeries and pretty long recoveries," Cara says. "If you don't have faith and if you don't have an understanding that God is molding you for something more, I don't see how she could be in the position that she is in today. I think that it would have been too easy to give up and say 'Maybe I am not meant for sports' and move on to something different in her life, but she stuck with it and I think that it is 100 percent faith-based."

That's not to say that King did not consider walking away.

"I leaned on it a ton," King says of her faith.

She credits Charlie Densmore, her Christian mentor at Duke, with helping her to find a path forward despite her disappointments.

"Without him, I probably would have stopped vaulting," King says. "He encouraged me to not only continue, but also to chase my dreams."

After her fourth major surgery, King returned late in her junior outdoor season and earned All-ACC Second Team after clearing 4.09 meters (13-5) at the ACC Outdoor Championships and then went 3.96 meters (12-11 ¾) at the NCAA East Regional.

The best performance of her Duke career came during the 2022-23 indoor season, when she cleared 4.25 meters (13-11¼) to win the Camel City Invitational in Winston-Salem, N.C.

It was the closest she would come to reaching 14 feet (4.27 meters), the height normally required to earn a spot in the Division I championships, during her time as a Blue Devil.

"Each time after a meet we would get that phone call and she would be disappointed and say, 'Didn't quite get there,'" Cara says. "She just knew that she could jump higher and she knew that she had it in her."  

King, who had made up her mind to transfer, sat out the spring season to preserve two full seasons of eligibility at her new institution.

"I loved Duke," says King, who graduated with a degree in Evolutionary Anthropology. "I loved my friends, I loved my team and I loved the academics. Despite the fact that vaulting didn't go the way that I wanted it to, it was the place for me and, because vaulting wasn't going my way, it helped build character and resilience.

"If I would have just done pretty well, I don't think that it would have motivated me to make the major change in my life to come to Roberts. But I know that I was performing nowhere near where my potential was, so I don't regret my time at Duke at all. I have a lot of good memories, but it also kind of made it where I was bold enough to open new doors and take my future in another direction."

Shared vision

Surprisingly, that direction was north.

King entered the transfer portal in March, just about a month before Roberts Wesleyan announced that Jenn Suhr, the winner of 17 U.S. National Championships, was returning to her alma mater as an assistant track and field coach and the pole vault coordinator.

Suhr opened the portal and saw King's name listed as the highest-rated vaulter.

King, who is not a fan of the cold weather, was thinking that she would land at a large Division I program in the South. Suhr, who was looking to hit a home run with her first recruit, picked up the phone and called King.

"When she reached out to me and explained to me what her vision was for Roberts, it lined up perfectly with what I wanted to do," King says. "I don't know what part of me was kind of holding out, but I wouldn't commit to anyone. I just think that none of their visions lined up with what I wanted and hers did. So, the moment that we talked and she told me what she was planning on doing with Roberts, I wanted to be a part of it."

The next call King made was to her parents, who had never heard of Roberts, which enters its 10^th season at the NCAA Division II level this fall, before. Once Brynn told them her decision, they backed her 100 percent.

"I was very surprised that she went up there, more because of the weather," says Mike, who grew up in Columbus, Ohio.

"I supported her, I understood what she was after," Cara says. "If I am going to take the time in my life to pursue pole vaulting, I want to do it with the best opportunity for my future. She was at a point where she didn't want to pole vault just to pole vault, she wanted to be the best that she could be as a pole vaulter."

The time the Suhrs spent at the clinic with young Brynn back in Texas didn't hurt, either.

"Obviously, it made an impression on Brynn that she would never forget because that was what drew her back to them," Cara says.

"It's not where I expected her to go, but it all worked out in the end," Mike says. "It's kind of like God had a plan for her and Rick and Jenn were a part of it."

King's decision changed the course of Roberts' pole vaulting six months before she competed in her first meet.

"It set the tone for the program, and it set the tone for what our goals are," Jenn Suhr says.

'Perfect storm'

King's first year in Rochester has been a whirlwind. When she arrived much of the conversation centered on the two centimeters she was seeking to clear at Duke, now it is about the 48 centimeters (nearly 19 inches) she has improved since putting on a Redhawks uniform for the first time.

The first question many ask is, 'how did she do it?'

"It's the perfect storm," Rick Suhr says. "It's the right athlete with the right coaches in the right place at the right time."

To be clear, King's success has not come easily.

She struggled for several weeks before finally eclipsing the 14-foot barrier during an informal meet at Nazareth University last summer.

"It was actually more of a relief than excitement, despite the fact that I had been trying to get that bar for four years," King says. "I felt like it was just like 'OK, we've reached that, now let's move on."

Her mother and Kelly aren't so sure.

"Once 14 happened, the next day I felt it was 14-6," Cara says. "The jumps have come in big increments rather than an inch at a time and looking at her vaults from when she showed up to what it looks like now, it's a completely new jump."

"That wasn't really that much of a difference on paper, but in my mind, I knew that was a huge barrier for her and from that point the doors have really opened for her to do a whole lot more," Kelly says. "It really gave her the confidence to go and clear the Olympic standard and make it to the Olympics."

Several factors have gone into King's meteoric rise. She is at a new university with new coaches, she has made changes to her diet, she has stayed healthy throughout the season, and she has completely bought in to the Suhrs' style of coaching.

"We have a system and we jump to that system and we can jump to that system on any runway in the world," Rick Suhr says "It's just a matter of executing it. It doesn't mean that you're going to win, it just means that you can be confident that you are in the best system, and you will be in the best position to score."

Exponential improvement

The program that King is following is the same one that Jenn Suhr followed for 17 years after first picking up a pole on the Roberts campus as a 22-year-old. She won the 2005 U.S. Indoor National Championship 10 months after taking up the sport full-time and still holds the world indoor record (5.03 meters, 16-6).

The system has been refined over time, but in its simplest form includes equal parts of physical, mental and technical training.

"They've got to be balanced in all three areas," Rick Suhr says. "You've got to continually develop the athlete in all three aspects and you've got to be a student of the game. You need to know the game mentally."

"Each month is building on the one before it," Jenn says.

None of this is lost on King, who started her first season at Roberts by breaking the NCAA Division II indoor mark on Dec. 1 and capped it by winning the NCAA Division II Outdoor Championship while setting meet and facility records (4.60 meters, 15-1) at Emporia State University on May 23.

She broke the NCAA Division II record eight times during the indoor season, including a winning effort of 4.65 meters (15-3) while becoming Roberts' first NCAA champion on March 8. She earned a spot in the Olympic Trials after becoming the first DII women's vaulter to clear 15 feet on Jan. 20, was named a DII All-America for both the indoor and outdoor seasons and was named the NCAA Division II Indoor Field Athlete of the Year.

King, who is pursuing a second Bachelor's degree in Exercise Science, credits the system.

"Honestly, it's my sense of comfort because I feel like I am not out there relying on myself when I get nervous about jumping," says King, who had a 4.0 GPA both semesters at Roberts. "I know that I have been brought up in that system and it is a source of confidence for me because that system has shown to be successful. In a way, I feel like it takes the pressure off of me doing something crazy because I am in the system, I know it and it will take over in times of stress come."

King's belief in herself has also soared.

"You build confidence through time and through progression," Rick Suhr says. "As all three of those things get better it becomes
exponential. If you are doing three different things better, that's not a little better, that's a lot better because it's times three now."

'It's now or never'

Despite all of her accomplishments, King was an underdog at U.S. Olympic Trials at the University of Oregon in June.

Coming from a small school, she was not used to the big stage. She battled "meet stress" and missed all three of her attempts at 4.5 meters, but squeezed into the final field of 13 due to making her first attempt at 4.35 meters.

"We were long shots going in," Rick Suhr says. "We had maybe a 9 or 10 percent chance of making that team. After Friday, it was probably down to 1 or 2 percent."

While many athletes would have spent the day in between qualifying and the finals resting their legs, King and Rick Suhr spent 90 minutes on an otherwise empty track trying to get things right and plot a path to Paris.

"Saturday was a confidence-builder," King says. "Friday did not go at all how I wanted it to as some old habits that I had kind of took over. It kind of goes back to the system. On Saturday, I was going back to a place where it was just me and Rick at this track, there were no distractions and I could let the system take over. It just gave me a time to block everything out and remind my body that it knows how to jump. I knew that if I could let the habits and stuff get back to the forefront that I would be fine. It didn't matter if my legs were tired the next day, so Saturday actually brought me a lot of renewed confidence for Sunday."

It worked.

Following the lead of Rick Suhr and embracing an all-or-nothing mentality, King found herself staring at the opportunity of a lifetime. King had passed on two lower bars and was facing the Olympic standard of 4.73 meters (15-6 ¼), which was 5 centimeters beyond her personal best. A make on the first attempt would catapult her into the top three.

Rick Suhr called her over and delivered a direct message.

"He told me that it is now or never and that if you want to make this dream a reality that the time is now," King says. "I had doubts in the back of my mind going into the whole competition and that was finally the moment where I was like 'All right, if I want this I have to completely let go of my own doubts, embrace everything that he said and go for it.' That was kind of the turning point."

King sprinted down the runway, planted her pole and made history by becoming the first Roberts student-athlete to qualify for the Olympics while enrolled as a student.

"In my mind and in my heart I was just talking to her and saying 'Brynn this is your one shot, you've got to make it,'" Cara says. "When she cleared that bar, I think I flew up out of my seat in shock.

"I just remember sitting there and squeezing Mike's leg and saying, 'She's going to make this team, she's going to make this team. Brynn doesn't show a lot of emotion, but when I saw her break down in tears on that track, my heart just melted and I cried, too. I just thought of everything that she had been through to that point. A lot of people questioned her decision to go Division II when she left Duke, but I think in her heart she knew that was right for her. She made decisions that weren't popular and dealt with all of the injuries and to see all of that unfold, she knew what she was doing. She made the right choices, and she followed her heart, and I am so proud of her."

As are so many others.

"The two most improbable things that I have seen in women's pole vault are when Jenn won U.S. Nationals after only vaulting 10 months, virtually impossible, and Brynn making this team, virtually impossible," Rick Suhr says. "Those are the two 1980 Olympic hockey team, Miracle-on-Ice-type things."

"I have never seen anyone so dedicated to being the best version of themselves like she has," Kelly says. "She has completely changed her life. At the beginning of our senior year, I could tell that she just really buckled down and I could tell that this wasn't just something that was a dream like all of us had, but was something that she actually wanted to accomplish.

"It's so amazing and so shocking, yet not shocking at all because I have seen how hard that she has worked. She is someone who has really taken all of the adversity that she has faced and transformed it into something that could help her succeed, and I think that is the exact reason why she is going to the Olympics."

Although the road has been challenging, King believes that her struggles have made her stronger.  

"It has made me extremely resilient and stubborn in a good way," she says. "Stubborn as in no matter what happens to me, no matter what someone tells me that if I have a goal in my mind, I will get it. I will go out and do everything I can to reach it and it also makes it that much sweeter knowing that it doesn't come easy. I went through a lot to get to where I am, so that just makes making the team all that much better."

'It's the stuff you see on TV'

The four weeks since the Olympic Trials have been a blur for the entire King family.

Brynn returned to a hero's welcome at Roberts and has continued to spend a great deal of training with the Suhrs. Mike and Cara returned to Texas with younger daughter Camryn, who is a soccer player, and turned their planned family vacation to Costa Rica into a trip to Paris, where they will be joined by Kelly.

The Suhrs canceled a couple of camping trips that they had planned.

"We all worked our way out of our vacations," Rick quipped.

And they wouldn't have it any other way.

Cell phones have been buzzing with congratulatory messages and Brynn has been overwhelmed with support from people on campus and in the Rochester and Houston communities. Vasquez has reached out along with cheerleading friends and Brynn's third-grade teacher, who she hasn't seen in years.

Brynn has been in Paris for a few days and will compete in the qualifying round at 4:40 a.m. on Monday. The final is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Wednesday.

"I never could have imagined her having this opportunity," Cara says. "As a parent, you want your kids to fulfil their dreams, but some dreams are harder to achieve and there are so few people who have the opportunity to do something like this. I am so proud of her, I am so happy for her and I am so thrilled. It has been amazing."

"Getting to see her on that stage is going to be so insane," Kelly says. "I really can't comprehend or even picture it right now. No matter how she does at the Olympics, this is just the gravy on top of all of her success."

Rick Suhr, who is as competitive as they come, agrees.

"She's in a no-lose situation," Suhr says. "If the season ends in three jumps in Paris, she has still put together probably the greatest college season of any college athlete in the history of pole vault that I know of."

Her father is still trying to wrap his head around it all.

"I had an idea that she was going to excel some, but I had no idea she was going to go the heights that she has gone," Mike says. "It's the stuff you see on TV when you are watching a '30 for 30' or stuff like that. It doesn't happen, or at least it doesn't happen to your kid."

As busy as she has been, Brynn did take a few moments to glance at her goal sheet and process everything after returning from the Olympic Trials.

"I had drawn lines through every single one that I had hit this year," she says. "It was kind of crazy to see what I was trying to do in the beginning of the year. Now those are bars that I come in at, so it's definitely crazy to think how far that I have come in a year. I am at a whole different level – mentally and physically – than where I was last summer."

Yes, she is, and the red, white and blue uniform that she will be wearing on Monday is her reward.