Good Pole Vault Heights for High School and College

A good pole vault height for high school is a ladder, not one number. For boys, 7' 0" to 11' 6" sends a second- or third-place vaulter on from league finals in California's CIF Southern Section, and 12' 6" to 14' 6" is Idaho's 2026 state qualifying standard, by class. For girls the same two rungs are 6' 0" to 9' 0" and 9' 0" to 11' 0". College recruiting ranges start at 4.10m (13' 5.5") for boys and 2.80m (9' 2.25") for girls.

Every row below is a named 2026 standard or the college range this site prints on its pole vault standards page, and nothing is estimated. No governing body publishes a height for each age, so the age table further down is a projection and says so. The CIF Southern Section and Idaho publish their standards in feet and inches, while Missouri and the college ranges use meters, so the ladder and the college table give both, converted at 1 foot = 0.3048m exactly. To place your own height, the pole vault rating tool takes either unit and shows the division it reaches; the girls version works the same way.

The high school ladder

Sources, all 2026 and all marks as published: CIF Southern Section minimum and at-large standards, the CIF-SS track and field playoff bulletin, MSHSAA district qualifying standards, Idaho IHSAA state qualifying standards and the FLYRA qualification standards. The bulletin sets the Southern Section rules: a league champion goes to the divisional prelims automatically, second and third place go with the minimum standard, fourth place or lower needs the at-large standard, and a finalist who misses those marks can still go in as a wild card with a top-12 mark on the division's performance list. The at-large bar runs from 9' 8" in Division 4 to 14' 3" in Division 1 for boys, and from 8' 11" to 11' 4" for girls. Idaho's sheet says each standard is the average of the 2023, 2024 and 2025 third-place marks; in the pole vault six of the ten printed standards sit 2 to 4 inches below that average, on the 6-inch bar beneath it (5A boys: 14' 6", 13' 6" and 13' 6" average 13' 10", and the standard is 13' 6"). FLYRA's meet is for grades 5 to 8, and its opening bars are 7' 0" for boys and 6' 0" for girls. I transcribed every number from those documents on November 1, 2026.

The college ranges

These are the ranges on this site's standards pages for boys and girls, transcribed from Streamline Athletes' published recruitment standards. The low number is the bottom of the band a division recruits from. The high number is where scholarship conversations get realistic at most programs in that division. Feet are rounded to the nearest quarter inch, the way this site's bar height chart converts a bar that was set rather than measured; the standards pages round down to the quarter inch, so several of their feet figures read a quarter inch lower (4.50m shows there as 14' 9").

Where the high school rungs land in college terms

Set the two tables side by side and the gaps are specific. Idaho's 6A boys' standard of 14' 6" (4.42m) is 8 centimeters under the Division I floor of 4.50m and 32 centimeters over the Division III and NAIA floor of 4.10m. It is already inside the Division II, Division III and NAIA bands. The CIF-SS Division 1 at-large bar of 14' 3" (4.34m) sits in the same gap, 16 centimeters under the Division I floor.

The girls' picture is wider. Idaho's 6A standard of 11' 0" (3.35m) is 35 centimeters under the Division I floor of 3.70m and 55 centimeters over the 2.80m floor that Divisions II and III share. A girl at Idaho's lowest standard, 9' 0" (2.74m), is 6 centimeters from that floor.

Read that as distance to cover, not as a verdict. The next section shows how far a younger vaulter is from the same points.

Reading the ladder by grade

A height means different things in different years. A freshman boy who clears 10' 0" would already advance from league finals as a second- or third-place finisher in CIF-SS Divisions 2, 3 and 4, whose minimums are 9' 3", 8' 9" and 7' 0"; only Division 1, at 11' 6", asks more. A freshman girl at 8' 0" clears the Division 2, 3 and 4 minimums of 7' 3", 6' 9" and 6' 0" and falls short of the Division 1 mark of 9' 0". By junior year the section and state rows are the ones to watch, and in the CIF Southern Section the bulletin has league finals results uploaded to MileSplit, so a qualifying clearance is on the record where a coach can find it. The college bands do not change with grade: a recruiting range is the same number for a sophomore as for a senior.

The same bands by age, 14 to 18

Projected with the TrackReels pole vault age curve, which this site derives from USATF championship records for the 13-14, 15-16, 17-18, under-20 and open divisions, anchored at age 18. The height at 14 is the age-18 height multiplied by 0.806 for boys and 0.831 for girls; at 16 the multipliers are 0.923 and 0.950. A projection is not a measured figure for any age group. Read it across a row: a 15-year-old boy clearing 10' 9.75" sits at the same point of the curve as an 18-year-old at Idaho's lowest state standard of 12' 6", and a 16-year-old girl at 11' 6.5" sits where an 18-year-old at the 3.70m Division I floor does. The pole vault progression tool does the same arithmetic for your own height: its worked example takes a boys' 10' 0" (3.05m) vault at 14 to 3.78m at 18, and a girls' 2.45m vault at 14 to 2.95m at 18.

Middle school vaulters

Florida's FLYRA championship is the one middle school meet on the ladder. It is open to grades 5 to 8 and to ages 10 through 15 years and 9 months on meet day. Its 2026 qualifying standards are 2.40m (7' 10.5") for boys and 2.30m (7' 6.5") for girls, and the opening bar at the meet is 7' 0" for boys and 6' 0" for girls. A boy who clears the opening bar is 10.5 inches under the standard, and a girl is 18.5 inches under it. The age table starts at 14 because the youngest USATF pole vault records the curve uses are for the 13-14 division.

What Division I walk-on lines ask of a vaulter

Three of the six Division I programs in the walk-on track times comparison publish a pole vault line. Iowa asks 16' 6" of boys and 13' 0" of girls, Fordham asks 4.55m and 3.68m, and Eastern Illinois asks 14' 0" and 11' 0". Iowa's lines sit inside the Division I bands; Fordham's boys' line clears the 4.50m floor by 5 centimeters and its girls' line misses the 3.70m floor by 2 centimeters. Idaho's 6A boys' standard of 14' 6" clears Eastern Illinois's line by 6 inches, and Idaho's 6A girls' standard of 11' 0" equals it.

Feet, meters and the bar

A vault is not measured after the jump. The bar is set first, and a clearance is worth whatever height the bar was at, so a meet run in feet and a meet run in meters set slightly different bars. The feet and inches to meters converter handles any height that is not in the tables, and the meters to feet converter goes the other way.

A results line that reads NH means no height was cleared, and the CIF-SS bulletin is explicit that a no-height is not a qualifying mark. Track meet abbreviations lists the other codes a vault sheet uses.

What a coach reads besides the height

A results sheet gives a coach one number. Film gives the rest: the length of the approach, where the takeoff foot lands, how high the grip is and how the pole bends. This site's pole vault standards page adds the context: poles are chosen by an athlete's weight and grip height, and access to a maintained pit and a coach who has vaulted decides more of a high school career than raw athleticism does.

Every reel on TrackReels carries the event, the mark and the date, so the clearance and the vault behind it reach a coach together. Create a free profile, post your best bar, and see where it ranks on the boys or girls board.

Read next: good long jump distances, what marks get you recruited and good hurdle times for high school.