Fogarasi breaks Class M record

New Haven, Conn. —NEW BRITAIN — About a year ago, Joe Fogarasi was looking for a place on the  Windham High boys track team. “Running wasn’t a lot of fun,” the sophomore said. So one day, not wanting to participate in a speed workout, Fogarasi happened  to wander over to the pole vault pit and Whippets coach Randall Prose asked  the-then freshman if he wanted to give it a try. “We were trying to find a home for him on the track and field team. He was  really frustrated with it, but I knew he races NASCAR on the weekends and I  said, ‘Joe, you have a screw loose, I have an event for you, you adrenaline  junkie,” Prose said with a laugh. Fogarasi moonlights as a Mini Stock driver at the Waterford Speedbowl on the  weekends and found that kind of thrill in the pole vault. “I just liked to do it, falling from that high feels really cool and I like  to do well at what I do and work really hard at it,” Fogarasi said. That was after the sophomore just cleared the bar at 14 feet, 3 inches on  Wednesday, a new Class M record. Not bad for an athlete who has been vaulting  all of one year and two weeks according to Prose. “He works so hard, the  hardest working kid I’ve ever had in 20 years of (coaching) sports,” Prose said.  “He focuses on this like crazy.” That included working all summer long, not only with Prose and his father,  but his new vaulting coach, Kyle Lambert. The Windham and University of New  Haven graduate is working on his doctorate degree at UConn and is helping  Fogarasi to new heights. “I figured I would maybe be going 13 feet by the end of my senior year, but I  really shot up in the summer, and I’m still working at it, getting on bigger  poles and, hopefully, 15 (feet)-plus is coming,” Fogarasi said. The sophomore attempted 15 feet, 3 inches on Wednesday, which would have  made him top seed in the State Open next week, but missed on his three  attempts.