As you've likely heard, we don't have any live-action contests to cover at LetsGoPeay.com right now. What we do have is free time; oodles and oodles of free time. Enough free time to swap oodles of emails with various people who would know to create a snapshot of the best athletes in Austin Peay track and field history. At the halfway point, let's look back at the career of the standout who helped ignite Austin Peay's rep as Pole Vaulter U.

Before Carrie Burggraf and her partner-in-crime Molly Bartkiewicz came to Austin Peay, the program pole vault record was about ten-and-a-half feet. For perspective, that would have finished outside the top-10 at the most recent Ohio Valley Conference Championships.

So to go from that to being a program that can lay claim to 15 of the last 26 gold medals awarded in OVC Championship pole vault competition is quite a climb. And Burggraf, who won five of those golds, is a big part of the reason why.

Burggraf redefined what could be accomplished at Austin Peay, not only in the pole vault but as a student-athlete. She's the only student-athlete in OVC history to earn two Steve Hamilton Sportsmanship Awards—this honor, considered the highest a student-athlete can receive, encompasses not only athletic prowess but good sportsmanship, academic achievement, and community service. Then there are the things Burggraf was able to accomplish in her spare time: two Academic All-American nods, an internship at the Jimmy Carter Center Peace Program, the John Burgess Award as Austin Peay's top political science scholar, four-straight OVC Medals of Honor and an NCAA Post-Graduate Scholarship. Seriously, look at that list.

And she did all that while excelling at a track and field discipline that requires meticulous concentration and preparation, one that beat up her body. The number of golds Burgraff could claim might be higher if she hadn't missed all her freshman outdoor season due to injury. Yet she overcame that injury to garner three NCAA Regional appearances. She also was the 2010 OVC Indoor Field Athlete of the Year, a distinction no Austin Peay field athlete has been able to claim since. Burggraf helped lay the foundation for everything that came after; she was inducted into Austin Peay's Athletic Hall of Fame in 2016.