Rachel Grenke: From Gymnastics Mat to Vaulting Bar, Edmonton’s Rising Pole Vault Star
Every so often a story emerges from university athletics that is bigger than the numbers in the results column. Rachel Grenke’s story is one of those. A former elite gymnast who spent fourteen years competing at the international level — only to reinvent herself entirely after injury — she came to pole vault as a relative newcomer and has spent barely three years turning herself into one of the most decorated young athletes in Canadian university sport. A World University Games bronze medallist representing Canada, a three-time Canada West conference champion, a program record holder, and a conference record holder, the Edmonton native has done all of that while still being a relatively young competitive vaulter in what is among the most technically demanding disciplines in track and field.
Growing Up in Edmonton: A Gymnast First
Rachel Grenke was born on December 29, 2003, in Edmonton, Alberta — a city with a strong tradition in athletics and a winter sport culture that shapes its young athletes in particular ways. Her childhood sporting identity was built not in a track and field arena but in the gymnasium. From the time she was young, Grenke threw herself into artistic gymnastics, and the sport quickly became the center of her athletic world.
She spent fourteen years as a competitive gymnast, rising through the provincial and national systems until she was a member of the Canadian National Junior gymnastics program. That is a meaningful distinction — national junior programs in gymnastics represent the country’s top young talent, athletes who are training with the possibility of international competition in mind and receiving structured high-performance coaching along the way. Gymnastics records document her competing at the 2018 and 2019 Elite Canada events, the country’s most prominent domestic competition outside of the national championships. She also appeared at the 2018 Canadian Championships in Waterloo and competed internationally at the 2018 Elite Gym Massilia in Marseille, France — a prestigious invitational meet that attracts top junior gymnasts from across Europe and beyond. Global Edmonton even profiled her as part of their MVP series in late 2018, covering a young Albertan athlete aiming higher in her sport.
That career — nearly a decade and a half in the making — came to an end after her Grade 12 year. An injury effectively closed the gymnastics chapter of her athletic life, and at an age when many elite gymnasts are already contemplating retirement, Grenke had to figure out what came next.
The Pivot: Finding Pole Vault
The answer, it turned out, was waiting for her in the University of Alberta’s track and field program. Paige Cocks — herself a former U of A Pandas pole vaulter and program record holder who went on to become a coach within the program — played a significant role in introducing Grenke to the event. Her sister and others around her encouraged her to try something new, and someone pointed out what Grenke came to discover for herself: that former gymnasts often transition remarkably well into pole vault. The physical qualities that define elite gymnastics — air awareness, upper body strength, grip strength, spatial orientation, body control — overlap substantially with what a pole vaulter needs as a foundation.
“I just wanted a new direction for my life,” Grenke has said of the transition. “Paige Cocks kind of got me into it along with my sister and [other] people [encouraged] me to say that it’s okay to try something new. I kind of learned that a lot of ex-gymnasts transitioned to pole vault and that was a whole new world that opened up for me.”
The transition was not without its challenges. While her gymnastics background gave her a head start on body control and upper body power, pole vault is its own deeply technical discipline. Learning to count approach steps precisely, developing the mechanics of bending a pole properly, and breaking long-ingrained gymnastics movement habits — including the tendency gymnasts have to run on their toes rather than with a proper dorsiflexed foot — all required focused work from scratch. “Pole vault is so technical that even though it can seem like ‘less’ to focus on than gymnastics,” she noted, “it’s so much more technical in a way.” Still, by her own account, the transition was less daunting than she expected, because the physical and kinesthetic tools gymnastics had given her translated immediately into the new event.
Perhaps even more meaningful than the athletic transition was the social one. Gymnastics, at the elite level, is profoundly individual — competitors train alongside each other but ultimately perform alone. Pole vault within a university team structure was something entirely different. “The biggest jump coming from gymnastics to pole vault was the community aspect,” she said. “I think pole vault is an individual sport, but at the same time doing it for a team like U of A is something that I’ve never experienced; gymnastics is very individual. It always was for me. So being able to come and be a part of something bigger than just myself has been great for shaping me as a person.”
First Year at the University of Alberta: Instant Impact
Grenke enrolled at the University of Alberta in the 2023–24 academic year, joining the Pandas track and field program — part of a program that has developed a genuine pole vault tradition over the past decade, producing athletes like Paige Cocks (Ridout), Rachel Hyink, Meghan Lim, and others who built a lineage of strong vaulters under the guidance of coaches Mark and Paige.
In her very first season of Canada West competition — the conference that encompasses western Canadian university athletics — she immediately established herself as the best women’s pole vaulter in the league, winning the Canada West conference gold medal. It was a remarkable debut for an athlete who had been competing in the event for just over a year, and it validated every instinct about what her gymnastics background could bring to the event.
Her first-year performance set the stage for the U SPORTS National Championships, where she earned a silver medal in the women’s pole vault. Silver at nationals in your first year of competition in the event is the kind of result that gets a coaching staff’s attention across the country, and it announced Grenke as a genuine national-level prospect in a way that a Canada West gold alone might not fully convey.
Sophomore Season: Record-Breaking, Another Silver, and the Road to Germany
Year two at the U of A was a season of escalating heights — literally and figuratively. Grenke arrived for the 2024–25 season with the foundation of a freshman year in place and the confidence of knowing she could compete nationally. The results reflected that growth throughout.
In January 2025, she made her mark at the 52nd Annual Golden Bears Open in Edmonton, clearing 4.15 metres to set a new program record. Then, just two weeks later, she returned to the same event and raised the bar further, clearing 4.22m on the same Edmonton facility that had hosted her record just weeks prior. That 4.22m jump did double duty: it broke the Pandas program record (previously 4.12m set by Rachel Hyink in 2020) and also surpassed the Golden Bears Open record of 4.21m. Notably, both former record holders — Rachel Hyink and Paige Cocks — were in the building to watch Grenke rewrite the standard they had set.
She carried that form into the Canada West Track and Field Championships in Regina in February 2025, where she entered the competition at 3.76m and proceeded to clear that, then 3.91m, then 4.06m, before attacking 4.22m. She cleared that height on her first attempt — simultaneously winning her second consecutive Canada West gold medal and breaking the conference record of 4.20m that had stood since 2005, when Saskatchewan’s Kelsie Hendry had set it.
At the U SPORTS National Championships in Windsor, she earned her second consecutive national silver, clearing 4.10m in a competition won by Jennifer Elizarov of Guelph with a U SPORTS record vault of 4.35m. Silver two years running at nationals represents sustained excellence at the highest level of Canadian university sport.
Perhaps the most significant achievement of the sophomore season, though, came that summer in Germany. Selected to represent Canada at the 2025 FISU World University Games — the biennial multi-sport competition for university athletes considered the second-largest multi-sport event in the world after the Olympics — Grenke competed in Bochum, Germany, at the Lohrheidestadion. There, on July 25, 2025, she delivered the performance of her young career: she cleared 4.30m on her first attempt, becoming one of only five competitors to reach that height, and then went on to clear 4.35m — a massive personal best — to secure the bronze medal and bring home Canada’s first medal in athletics at those Games. The result placed her ahead of athletes from the Netherlands and the United States and announced her presence on an international stage in the most direct possible way.
Third Season: Conference Record Again, Eyes on Nationals
Entering the 2025–26 season, Grenke faced what she acknowledged was a limited lead-up to varsity competition. That made what followed all the more impressive. At the Canada West Championships in Saskatoon in February 2026, she delivered another conference-record performance, clearing 4.23m to claim her third consecutive Canada West gold medal and break her own conference record in the process. It was her third straight conference title and a third straight program record, each setting a higher bar for every athlete who follows her at the U of A.
By early March 2026, with the U SPORTS National Championships at the University of Manitoba’s James Daly Fieldhouse in Winnipeg on the horizon, she was aiming to add the one title that had eluded her: a national gold. Her performances at the conference level, her international medal, and three years of consistent improvement had built a compelling case that she was capable of converting her Canada West dominance into a national championship.
Coaching and the U of A Legacy
The environment that has shaped Grenke’s pole vault development is not accidental. The University of Alberta has built genuine pole vault infrastructure over the past decade, and she trains under coaches Mark and Paige Cocks — the latter being the very alumna whose record she first broke, and who had encouraged her to try the event in the first place. That continuity — being coached by someone who has lived the U of A pole vault experience — is something Grenke identifies as central to her development.
“Mark and Paige helped me not only learn the skill of pole vault, but also just the training behind it,” she said. “Having them being my indoor and outdoor coaches, having that consistency is huge over the whole year. I think them travelling with me and giving me their time is huge, and I respect them a lot for it and I thank them a lot for it.”
The program’s tradition — which includes athletes like Meghan Lim, Spencer Allen, and Nathan Fillipek alongside the women’s vaulters Grenke has followed — creates a genuine culture of high performance that feeds on itself. Records invite new record-chasers; champions attract athletes who want to become the next one. Grenke is now part of that lineage, and will no doubt be someone that future Pandas vaulters are chasing in their own turn.
Personal Bests and World Athletics Profile
As of early 2026, Rachel Grenke’s official personal bests are as follows:
- Pole Vault: 4.35 metres (July 25, 2025, Lohrheidestadion, Bochum, Germany — 2025 FISU World University Games, World Athletics-registered)
Her World Athletics athlete code is 15035032. Her current world ranking in the women’s pole vault places her approximately #112–130 globally — a meaningful international position for a 22-year-old athlete in just her third year of serious competition in the event. She holds one World Athletics-registered international medal designation: the World University Games bronze from Bochum.
Her personal best of 4.35m places her within striking distance of genuinely elite international territory. The Canadian national record in women’s outdoor pole vault, set by Alysha Newman at 4.82m, remains a long-term benchmark, but Grenke’s recent trajectory — from a first competition at relatively modest heights to a 4.35m clearance within roughly three and a half years — is the kind of improvement curve that suggests her ceiling remains well above where she currently stands.
Looking Beyond University: Commonwealth, Worlds, and Olympics
Grenke has been direct about her ambitions beyond the university circuit. When the Pandas chapter of her career concludes, she intends to pursue international competition in the senior ranks. “My goals beyond university are just to make as many Canadian teams as possible,” she said. “That being said, Commonwealth, hopefully the Olympics one day, Worlds — just as many teams as I can make for the duration of my career.”
Those are not idle aspirations. A 4.35m personal best at the age of 21 — with consistent, steep improvement from year to year — puts her in the conversation for Canadian team selection at major international competitions, even now. The FISU Games medal demonstrated that she can perform under pressure at an international competition format, against athletes from multiple countries, and come away with hardware. That experience matters when national team selectors are making decisions about who to take to the next Commonwealth Games or World Championships.
Her coach Paige Cocks, herself a former elite vaulter, is well-positioned to understand what it takes to develop from the university level toward international competition, and the continuity of that coaching relationship appears likely to extend beyond graduation.
Identity, Sport, and What the Bar Means
One of the most striking things about Grenke as an athlete is the reflectiveness with which she talks about her sport and what it means to her. Coming from gymnastics — a sport that begins for most athletes in early childhood and can consume the identity of those who reach elite levels — she brings an unusual degree of perspective to what she is doing now. She entered pole vault explicitly not expecting it to become a defining endeavor, and found that it became one anyway.
“Coming in, I viewed the sport as something that was just fun to keep me active,” she said, “but as I got further, it’s not who only I identify as an athlete. I use the sport to help identify myself, and I think that it’s only benefitted me positively, and I think that it’s shaped my life for the better.”
That shift in relationship with sport — from diversion to identity — is something many athletes experience, but rarely with the self-awareness that Grenke brings to describing it. Fourteen years of gymnastics, followed by injury, followed by an entirely new discipline in which she quickly became one of the best in the country: that arc has given her a maturity about what competition means and what she wants from it that shows up in how she approaches big moments on the runway.
Social Media
Rachel Grenke is active on Instagram under the handle @rachelgrenke, where she shares glimpses of her training, competition, and life at the University of Alberta. She represented Canada at the 2025 FISU World University Games and is listed on Athletics Canada’s official athlete page, reflecting her status as a nationally-recognized competitor.
A Story Still Being Written
Rachel Grenke came to pole vault through a doorway that injury forced open, and walked through it into something she could not have fully anticipated. Three Canada West gold medals. Two U SPORTS silvers. A Pandas program record. A Canada West conference record. A World University Games bronze medal for Canada. All of that in three seasons of competition in an event she had not even attempted in high school.
At 22, she is still at the beginning of what her coaches and the competition record both suggest could be a substantial senior career. The vault bar keeps going up. So does she.
Personal bests current as of April 2026. World Athletics profile: athlete code 15035032. Instagram: @rachelgrenke. Athletics Canada profile: athletics.ca. University of Alberta Pandas Track and Field program.
