Long before Peter Geraghty tied the indoor pole vault record and set a new standard for the outdoor pole vault record for the Eastern track and field team, he wanted someone to cut his left hand off.

In February 2013, before Geraghty transferred to Eastern from North Central College, he had another day of practice, though it ended as no ordinary day.

He was on the runway, getting ready to do what he had done many times since he was at Oak Park and River Forest High School, but it did not finish with a safe landing on a foam mat.

“I got spit back up on the runway and broke both of my wrists,” Geraghty said. “It just really f****** hurt, but it wasn’t that pain that got me the most.”

The Oak Park native still had hope that his wrists would be OK, but the bad news was inevitable.

Geraghty sat in a room at his doctor’s office, waiting, hoping that good news would be sent his way.

“The doc comes in and says, ‘yeah, you have a few fractures,’” he said. “I cried like a baby when he told me it was fractured. I was holding on to dear hope, sitting in that doctor’s office.”

Crushed.

Terrible.

Depressed.

All words that described what Geraghty felt leaving his doctor’s office.

During the next few months, rehab went slow — too slow — for Geraghty.

“In my head I was just like, ‘man, this thing is going to be useless, you might as well just cut off my hand,” Geraghty said. “Put a hook on it.’ It was a piece of crap.”

Before he officially arrived for the fall 2013 semester at Eastern, he finally opted for surgery on his left wrist, which was not healing how he wanted it to.

Geraghty had not pole vaulted in more than six months and it showed the first time Eastern pole vaulting coach Kyle Ellis saw him.

“Honestly, the first time I ever saw him pole vault, it was a little rough,” Ellis said.

Yet, the man Geraghty said knows every intricacy about pole vaulting, did see potential during the first pole vaulting session at Eastern for Geraghty.

Before coming to Eastern, Geraghty had a skip in his approach, which Ellis taught him was not the best thing to do.

Geraghty said the one piece of knowledge from Ellis that has helped him the most has been the differences in short approach vaulting and long approach vaulting.

“Sometimes if you watch the vault, you’ll see a vaulter take a tiny hop before they start running and maybe how that’s not the best thing,” Geraghty said.

That skip, which some pole vaulters utilize could change the position of their hips, which leads to vaulting higher from short approaches, but not from long approaches, Geraghty said.

“Vaulters get tricked, thinking, ‘well, if I jumped this high from short, then I’ll jump 19 (feet) from my full approach,’” Geraghty said. “The problem is you try to add in the skip with a full approach and everything kind of goes to s***.”

He said the issue occurs when the pole vaulter reaches his fastest speed and has to slow down when planting the pole, which is not ideal.

“You want to be able to kind of almost accelerate right up until the last two steps of your run,” Geraghty said.

The biggest improvement since he stepped foot on Eastern has been his approach, Ellis said.

“He is moving faster and more consistently down the runway,” he said. “He is starting to figure out where he is on the runway, so even if his step gets off a bit he can adjust and still make the jump work.”

Geraghty calls it a, “big boy run” as he said previously having a skip in his approach was like having on training wheels.

“I didn’t want to do it because I felt I could do better with them on, which turns out I couldn’t,” Geraghty said. “Kyle was right. As he is most of the time.”

With a new approach under his belt and his wrist injuries well in the past, Geraghty was set for a successful season, which Ellis had planned from the beginning.

Before Geraghty ever met his coach, Ellis had already drawn out a plan as to what poles the newcomer would use this season.

But there was still the issue of Geraghty returning from his injuries, prior to any competition for the Eastern program. Ellis said his coaching style gave Geraghty a sense of confidence and security to return.

“I have a very systematic approach for moving up grip and bigger poles,” Ellis said. “Once I got him to understand that, I think it changed his outlook on that and dismissed a lot of fear and doubt that he had. I told him what poles he should be able to get on by the end of the year based on what I had seen and he looked at me like I was crazy.”

Geraghty thought Ellis was out of his mind when he first showed him what poles he would be using.

“He pulled out poles I was going to use and I said, ‘I’m definitely not using those. They’re way too huge,’” Geraghty said.

But Ellis was right again. Within months Geraghty was using those bigger poles that he could not imagine himself using before.

The student has learned from the master and during his first and only season with Eastern, as a red-shirt senior, Geraghty is tied with his teammate Mick Viken with the best indoor height in the pole vault at 17-feet, 10.5 inches.

On April 22, Geraghty broke the outdoor record in the pole vault, with a height of 18-feet, 2.75 inches.

“He takes pole vaulting very seriously, but I don’t think he takes himself too serious,” Ellis said.

Geraghty has already competed at NCAA Indoor Championships, where he finished 11th overall with a height of 17-feet, 8.5 inches, but he is still looking ahead to more.

“I’m looking forward to the NCAA Outdoor Nationals and the U.S.A. Outdoor Nationals,” he said. “Maybe win some money at that meet. That would be really cool if I somehow did jump amazing and got third place or whatever and got a paycheck.”

Aldo Soto can be reached at 581-2812 or asoto2@eiu.edu.

Peter Geraghty [contains language]