With one jump, Scott Toney set a Penn pole vault record, and topped his late brother’s mark in a fitting tribute

Penn pole vaulter Scott Toney warned his teammate Ben Šachta before the team arrived at Penn State: “I’m either jumping the school record or I’m tearing my hamstring.”

It was a Jan. 25 indoor meet and Toney woke up feeling tired, and his groin was tight. He drank his usual Red Bull right before his jumps to try to alleviate the sluggishness. And he remembered a story his older brother and pole vaulting mentor Marc once told him.

Marc was also a pole vaulter during his college years at the University of California, Davis. He went into a meet a bit sour because of the rainy and windy conditions. But it quickly turned into a nice day. And he still performed badly.

The moral of the story, Marc told Scott: “No matter what the day is, you only have so many meets left, so just try and go into every meet with a good attitude.”

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And that’s exactly what Toney did at Penn State as he attempted to set the school record.

“I wasn’t feeling the best, but I was still very confident that I was going to do it,” he said.

All of Toney’s early bars went fine, but when he got to 5.50 meters, he ran through his first two attempts and didn’t take them up.

Teammate James Rhoads thought Toney might have been hurting — an especially worrisome notion given his extensive injury history. But Toney planted, swung, and went right over the bar. With the 18-foot, ½-inch jump, he broke the Penn program record, which stood for six years. His mark, though, only lasted two weeks.

Rhoads claimed the program record for himself with a 5.58-meter jump (18-4) on Feb. 10 at a Liberty University meet.

Toney no longer tops the Penn record books, but his jump logged another, far more significant achievement: He broke the family record held by his late brother.

Marc died as the result of an accident on Sept. 14, 2023. Marc held the family record with a 5.45-meter jump, and with the 5.50-meter mark, Scott — the youngest of four brothers — beat him. And Scott knows Marc would have been happy to see him do it.

“I know that he would have wanted me to beat it, and for me to be better and push myself, and so that’s kind of what I did, is just used the sadness and the anger into work,” he said.

During an early morning class at Penn, Toney got a text from his brother, Shawn, telling him to leave. Shawn shared the news that Marc had died. After talking with his mother, Toney biked home in tears. A friend came over, but Toney sat on his bed crying for about an hour.

After he was done, Toney didn’t want to just sit there. Practice was in about 30 minutes.

“If I wanted to be better than him, if I wanted to push myself, if I wanted to set a good example … I wasn’t going to get better by sitting on my bed,” Toney said. “I wanted to at least use those tears.”

The idea to use those tears came, in fact, from Marc. When Marc had a bad meet, he would go to the bike and pedal out all of his anger.

So Toney did the same. He went to the gym.

“He walks into practice maybe two minutes late. And he’s never late,” said Penn’s vertical jumps coach Joe Klim. “And I’m like, ‘Holy [bleep].’ So I walked up to him and said, ‘Dude, you don’t have to be here.’ He said, ‘Nope, I’m good.’ ”

Klim recognized that relentless work ethic right when he was first getting to know Toney. While he was recruiting him in Mountainview, Calif., Toney — the No. 2 pole vaulter in the country at the time — admitted to Klim that he allowed himself “one cheat meal a year.”

Part of that drive comes from Toney’s belief that he isn’t athletically gifted. He’s not as fast as many of the other jumpers, he doesn’t have as high of a vertical leap, and he’s 5-foot-11. But he does have control over his disciplined nutrition and meticulous preparation.

Every day he’s in season, Toney has the same breakfast: half a scoop of oatmeal, a handful of nuts, a scoop of berries, and protein powder. He calls the meal, which he adopted from Marc, “the perfect breakfast [that] shockingly hasn’t gotten old yet.”

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“He’s the one who started the nutrition and said, ‘You know, most people are not doing this,’ ” Toney said. “ ‘And if you can do this, it’s going to give you the edge.’ ”

Another edge came from the college-level workouts Marc imparted on Toney when he was in high school, which involved weightlifting, high bar work, and sprinting.

Penn came on Toney’s radar after Marc emailed Klim without his brother knowing.

“That’s what got the ball rolling,” Toney said. “That’s why I’m here, is because of him.”

Toney eventually knew Marc had emailed Stanford and Penn. But when he went back to California for the funeral, Toney went through Marc’s computer. There, in his emails, he saw that Marc had reached out to about 15 other coaches. He never knew about those.

“He just always wanted what’s best for me,” Toney said. “And he would tell the coaches, ‘Hey, you know, this is my brother or whatever,’ and some of those coaches did reach out to me, and he just didn’t really tell me about it.”

Toney ran into many obstacles when he got to Penn. His freshman fall in 2020 was canceled because of COVID-19, and his spring was derailed by shin splints. That summer, he dealt with a stress fracture in his back, which arose from vaulting on a faulty pit.

During the indoor season that fall of 2021, he finally recovered, but the shin splints returned, and he missed that whole run. Sophomore spring, as he began the outdoor track season and was finally doing well again, he pulled his hamstring warming up for the Penn Relays.

In his junior year in 2022-23, Toney was still recovering from the hamstring pull and was on Accutane, an acne medication that can make it difficult to engage in high-octane physical activity. The plan was for Scott to return to practice in January. When he came back, he wasn’t doing much.

Toward the end of January, though, Toney told Klim that he wanted to compete at the Ivy Heptagonal Championships.

“I’m like, ‘What are you talking about? You’re not even close to being ready to compete,’ ” Klim said.

Toney not only competed but finished fourth, clearing 5.17 meters.

“It was absolutely unbelievable. It was crazy,” Klim said. “I mean, we were just dumbfounded.”

After all that adversity, Toney has managed to stay healthy and hopes to finish his Penn career strong. He thinks he can reach 5.60 meters, and his lifetime goal has always been 5.70, not to mention 5.82, the Olympics A standard, which he has his eye on for the 2028 Games.

After this season, Toney is looking to transfer to another school to use his extra year of eligibility.

But first he will close out his Penn career. One meet he has circled on his calendar: the Ivy Heps on Saturday. It’s an important meet, but it also happens to fall on Marc’s birthday.

As always, Toney will rely on everything Marc taught him.

“He was a mentor, he was a best friend, someone who constantly pushed me, constantly wanted what’s best for me … I don’t have any regrets with him. I think he really did a lot for me. I think I’m just very appreciative of everything he’s tried to do for me and help me out.”