Daily Chronicle 2023 Girls Track and Field Athlete of the Year: DeKalb’s Joscelyn Dieckman

In a span of two years, Joscelyn Dieckman went from a high-level gymnast to one of the best pole vaulters in the state, and it all started with her on a track running with friends, rehabbing an ankle injury.

The DeKalb junior took second in the pole vault in the Class 3A state meet to cap her first full track season. For her achievements, she is the 2023 Daily Chronicle Girls Track Athlete of the Year.

“I planned to do gymnastics in college, and I kind of showed up at a track practice just to run with my friends and get back into athletics. And I was wearing a gymnastics t-shirt, and the coach was like, ‘Absolutely not. You’re gonna go vault.’ I was like, ‘What even is that? What even is pole vaulting?’ "

—  Joscelyn Dieckman, DeKalb pole vaulter

“As it was kind of my first experience with outdoors, I’m really happy with how it went, especially toward the beginning of the season,” Dieckman said. “Toward the end was a little bit rough, but I was overall really happy with the season.”

Dieckman said she started in gymnastics when she was 4. But an injury her freshman year sidelined her for a while, and so to get healthy she was doing some light running with friends during track practice.

The team’s coach at the time, Tywon Green, ushered her toward pole vault instead once he found out she was a gymnast.

“It wasn’t a choice I made, actually,” Dieckman said. “I came to track as a form of rehab after a gymnastics injury. I was a level 9 gymnast. I planned to do gymnastics in college, and I kind of showed up at a track practice just to run with my friends and get back into athletics. And I was wearing a gymnastics T-shirt, and the coach was like, ‘Absolutely not. You’re gonna go vault.’ I was like, ‘What even is that? What even is pole vaulting?’ ”

She suffered an ankle injury at the indoor state meet her sophomore year, sidelining her outdoor season.

But even with the injury, she felt at home competing in track. So although she was a high-level gymnast in a sport she had competed in for about two-thirds of her life, she committed to track full time.

“The mental toughness you need for gymnastics is a lot, and it was very, very hard to continue with that, and I loved gymnastics. I loved gymnastics a lot,” Dieckman said. “But at the level I was doing it, it was very hard to sustain physically and mentally.

“When I came here, I found an incredibly supportive environment. My coach [Izaiah Webb] is a sports psychologist. And honestly, it’s just the passion that I had for this sport immediately, it was kind of like I just knew this is what I wanted to do.

“This is where I wanted to be.”

At the Top Times indoor meet this year, which acts as the unofficial indoor state championship, Dieckman cleared 13 feet to win the title. Her top vault in the spring was 12-9 in Batavia in April, and she went 12-4 3/4 at the state meet to take second.

Dieckman’s DuPage Valley Conference rival and Rise Pole Vault Club teammate Kait McHale, a Naperville Central senior, won the title, going 12-8 3/4.

“We’re obviously super excited to be the top returner in the state,” DeKalb girls track coach Max Crowninshield said. “Expectations are obviously high there. But even bigger than that, we’re looking at her being able to break her own personal record each time and go forward and do the best vault that she can and prepare herself for the next level afterward as well.”

Dieckman competed only in the outdoor season as a freshman, and then only later in the season. Her best leap was clearing 8-0 1/2 at a triangular at Naperville North. She won three indoor meets in 2022 and went 11-0 to take fifth at Top Times.

But she said that she was passionate about the sport from the start, and the more passionate she was, the more her results improved.

“I promise I really wasn’t that great my freshman year trying it,” Dieckman said. “But after a few months of doing this sport and especially at my club, I really kind of took off performance-wise, and that just made me love it more.”

Dieckman said her goal for next year is to set a state record, which is 13-9. The 3A record is 13-3, a mark she’s beaten by half an inch at club meets in the offseason.

She also said she’s had some talks with a lot of colleges, including Dartmouth, Princeton, Northern Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan State. She said she’s just listening and not really saying yes or no to anything yet.

Crowninshield said that even though she’s so new to the sport, she is still a great leader to not just the pole vault crew, but the whole team.

“Within her pole vault crew, they’ve got a great group going there, and she’s a massive leader,” Crowninshield said. “She just shows to every girl on the team how to show up, do work each day and enjoy it. She has a pure joy for the sport that is unbridled, and that’s something that I think a lot of athletes look up to and enjoy.

“This world, it’s difficult sometimes, and she’s got a lot of hard days, but she still brings an energy and a joy that is infectious to her teammates and really does that well.”