Ellie (Rudy) van Swearingen (2019) - Hall of Fame - Montana State University Athletics

Ellie (Rudy) van Swearingen

Induction:
2019
Class:
2009

It’s not possible for an athlete to dominate a conference to a greater extent than Ellie (Rudy) van Swearingen dominated the Big Sky pole vault scene.

From 2005-09, the Woodland Park, Colorado, product competed in four Big Sky Conference Indoor Championships and four Outdoor Championships. She won the pole vault competition in every single one, and was named Big Sky Field Events Athlete of Meet twice. She set Big Sky records and Montana State records, and was named Big Sky Field Events Athlete of the Week 21 times. And she was driven by something that happened in high school Or rather, something that hadn’t happened.

“She never won a high school (state) championship,” said Tom Eitel, Montana State’s long-time jumps and vaults coach, “so when she came (to MSU) she said, ‘I want to win a championship.’ So she’d never go home. Her run got a lot better, and we were able to move her back farther (on the runway). The faster you are the farther back you should be (when beginning) your run, so she was able to use her speed more.”

Van Swearingen coupled her work ethic with fearlessness and toughness, Eitel said. The beginning of her Bobcat career was stymied by a hand injury, but in the spring of 2005 she won her first Big Sky championship. She won Big Sky outdoor titles in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2009. She claimed every indoor championship from 2006 to 2009. And in March of 2007 she made history by becoming the first Bobcat woman to win a national championship. It came in dramatic fashion when she won a jumpoff against Natalie Moser of Florida and Kate Sultanova of Kansas. “She was clean all the way through,” Eitel said, “she didn’t have any misses, and that’s something we’d been practicing a lot. If you get five bar clearances chances are you’re going to win something our you’re going to be right there, I don’t care what championship it is.

“So she was clean, but then it gets hard,” Eitel said. “You start getting tired, you’ve moved up poles to the biggest pole you can be on in a meet, and you have to try to stay on those. The girl from Florida was getting tired, so I moved Ellie down a pole, and she didn’t make (14’ 1.25”) by much, (the bar) rattled a little bit, but she made it. Jumpoffs are very, very tiring. She just wasn’t going to lose.”

Eitel had always admired van Swearingen’s toughness. At the 2008 indoor national championships, her toughness and resilience was put to the test. “Something a lot of people don’t know is that I’m sure she had a broken wrist the next year at nationals,” he said. “Her last jump she made, she (said), ‘That’s probably it, I don’t think I can hang onto the pole any more.’” Van Swearingen again cleared 14’ 1.25” to claim the national title, edging April Kubishta from Arizona State and Sultanova. Another competitor she topped in each of those meets was much more familiar.

One of the athletes that prevented van Swearingen from winning a high school state title in Colorado was her teammate, Kelley DiVesta. “(van Swearingen) never won a state championship in college because her teammate always beat her,” Eitel said. “That girl ended up being an All-America at Washington, but she never beat Ellie in college.”