Mark Hollis (born December 1, 1984) is an American

track and field Track and field is a sport that includes athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name is derived from where the sport takes place, a running track and a grass field for the throwing and some of the jumping events ...

athlete who competes in the

pole vault Pole vaulting, also known as pole jumping, is a track and field event in which an athlete uses a long and flexible pole, usually made from fiberglass or carbon fiber, as an aid to jump over a bar. Pole jumping competitions were known to the Myc ...

. His personal best for the event is , set in 2014. He finished third at the

2014 IAAF Continental Cup The 2014 IAAF Continental Cup was an international track and field sporting event that was held in Marrakech, Morocco, on 13–14 September 2014. It was the second edition of the IAAF Continental Cup since the name and format was changed from t ...

. Hollis is a three-time national champion in his discipline, having won outdoors in 2010 and indoors in 2011 and 2014. He represented his country at the

2011 World Championships in Athletics The 13th IAAF World Championships in Athletics () was an international athletics competition that was held in Daegu, South Korea. It started on 27 August 2011 and finished on 4 September 2011. The United States topped the medal standings in th ...

. He ranked second in the world in the 2014 season.

Career

Early life and career

Hollis grew up in

Freeport, Illinois Freeport is the county seat and largest city of Stephenson County, Illinois, United States. The population was 23,973 at the 2020 census, and the mayor of Freeport is Jodi Miller, elected in 2017. Freeport is known for hosting the second Linc ...

, the son of John Hollis, a second-generation pastor of the

Church of the Nazarene The Church of the Nazarene is an evangelical Christian denomination that emerged in North America from the 19th-century Wesleyan-Holiness movement within Methodism. It is headquartered in Lenexa within Johnson County, Kansas. With its members co ...

. ONU alumnus Hollis continues professional dominance in pole vault; wins 2010 USA Outdoor Championships
. NCNNews (2010-07-07). Retrieved on 2014-11-06. He attended

Freeport High School (Illinois) Freeport High School is a public secondary school located in Freeport, Illinois, United States. Demographics In the 2014–2015 school year, Freeport High School had a population of 55.2% white students, followed by 23.7% black students, 10.7% st ...

in Illinois and went on to study

sports management Sport management is the field of business dealing with sports and recreation. Sports management involves any combination of skills that correspond with planning, organizing, directing, controlling, budgeting, leading, or evaluating of any organiz ...

at the state's

Olivet Nazarene University Olivet Nazarene University (ONU) is a private Nazarene university in Bourbonnais, Illinois. Named for its founding location, Olivet, Illinois, ONU was originally established as a grammar school in east-central Illinois in 1907. In the late 1930 ...

. While there he competed for the college athletically in the

NAIA championships Naia or NAIA may refer to: Sports * National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics * NAIA Softball Championship * NAIA Volleyball Championship * NAIA World Series * NAIA Wrestling Championship * NAIA lacrosse Other * Naia (skeleton), a Paleoa ...

, the lower-level national division.Mark Hollis

USA Track and Field USA Track & Field (USATF) is the United States national governing body for the sports of track and field, cross country running, road running and racewalking (known as the sport of athletics outside the US). The USATF was known between 1979 and ...

. Retrieved on 2014-11-06. He was runner-up at the NAIA outdoor championship in 2005, won the title in 2006 and 2007, and also finished second at the 2007 NAIA indoor meet.Mark Hollis, champion pole vaulter, inducted into Hall of Fame
. Olivet Nazarene University (2013-11-11). Retrieved on 2014-11-06. Upon his graduation in 2007 he was the school record holder for the event both indoors and outdoors with marks of and respectively.Mark Hollis
Tilastopaja. Retrieved on 2014-11-06. He was later inducted into the university's athletic hall of fame. In the 2008 season he turned professional and focused full-time on pole vaulting. His first season brought great improvement: in April he cleared at a

Drake Relays The Drake Relays (officially the Drake Relays presented by Xtream powered by Mediacom) is an outdoor track and field event held in Des Moines, Iowa, in Drake Stadium on the campus of Drake University. Billed as ''America's Athletic Classic'', it ...

promotion meeting. He improved to soon after – a feat which ranked him twelfth in the global lists that year. He competed at the 2008 United States Olympic Trials, but did not make the team. The following year he married his partner Amanda, who also served as his coach. That season he no-heighted at the

United States Indoor Track and Field Championships The USA Indoor Track and Field Championships is an annual indoor track and field competition organized by USA Track & Field, which serves as the American national championships for the sport. In years which feature a World Indoor Championships in ...

, but his best performance of the year at the

USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships The USA Track & Field Outdoor Championships is an annual track and field competition organized by USA Track & Field, which serves as the American national championships for the sport. Since the year 1992, in the years which feature a Summer Olym ...

, vaulting to finish in fifth place.

First national titles

Hollis had his first major circuit victory at the 2010

Millrose Games The Millrose Games is an annual indoor athletics meet (track and field) held each February in New York City. They started taking place at the Armory in Washington Heights in 2012, after having taken place in Madison Square Garden from 1914 to 2011 ...

, beating national rivals

Derek Miles Derek Miles (born September 28, 1972) is an American pole vaulter, from Tea, South Dakota. A former pole vaulter for the University of South Dakota Track and Field team, Miles is currently an assistant coach for the Coyotes. In 2004, he placed se ...

and Tim Mack. He began competing abroad and was the victor at the

Grande Premio Brasil Caixa de Atletismo Grande means "wikt:large, large" or "great (disambiguation), great" in many of the Romance languages. It may also refer to: Places *Grande, Germany, a municipality in Germany *Grande Communications, a telecommunications firm based in Texas *Gran ...

meet and Golden Roof Challenge in Austria. Tough conditions at the

2010 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships The 2010 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships were held at Drake Stadium, Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa on June 23–27, 2010. In order to boost the visibility of this event, USATF sponsored a member appreciation tent at the event and ...

worked in Hollis's favour, as only he and Derek Miles managed to clear in the strong winds. Hollis won the event on count-back to claim his first national title. Later that season he equalled his personal record to rank ninth in the world. A win at the

Birmingham Indoor Grand Prix The Birmingham Indoor Grand Prix, formerly known as Aviva Indoor Grand Prix, is an annual indoor track and field competition which is held in mid-February at the Arena Birmingham in Birmingham, England. It is one of a handful of events to hold IAA ...

in England preceded his second national title at the 2011 USA Indoor Championships. He finished his indoor season with a personal record clearance of . He struggled to match this forms outdoors, however, and placed fourth at the

2011 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships The 2011 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships were held at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon. Organised by USA Track and Field, the four-day competition took place from June 23–26 and served as the national championships in track and field for ...

. Having achieved the previous "A" selection standard, he was chosen for the

ahead of national third-placer Nick Mossberg. At the global event in

Daegu Daegu (, , literally 'large hill', 대구광역시), formerly spelled Taegu and officially known as the Daegu Metropolitan City, is a city in South Korea. It is the third-largest urban agglomeration in South Korea after Seoul and Busan; it is ...

he cleared the opening height but then had three failures at . In 2012 he set the same mark at the 2012 USA Indoors as he had a year early, but it was only enough for third on that occasion. He placed in the top three of both the Brazilian Athletics Tour meets he competed at and was runner-up at the

Ponce Grand Prix The Ponce Grand Prix de Atletismo is a track and field competition held yearly in Ponce, Puerto Rico at the Francisco Montaner Stadium. The event started in 2007, after the successful hosting of the 2006 Ibero-American Championships.Robinson, ...

with a clearance of . He matched that height at the 2012 United States Olympic Trials, but this was not sufficient for the American Olympic team and he finished fifth in the event. His form was not as good in the subsequent 2013 season, in which he ranked outside the top five in national competitions and did not vault over five and a half metres.

World leader

Hollis returned to top level form in 2014, taking consecutive wins at the Millrose Games then the USA Indoor Championships for his third national title. A vault of was a world leading mark in May, and the best mark he had achieved in nearly four years. He was fourth at the World Challenge Beijing meet and finished the

2014 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships The 2014 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships was held at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California. Organised by USA Track and Field, the four-day competition took place June 26–29 in conjunction with the USA Junior Combined Events Outdoor ...

as the runner-up with his best of , second to

Sam Kendricks Sam Kendricks (born September 7, 1992) is an American pole vaulter. He is a three-time indoor and six-time outdoor national champion (2014–2019), the 2016 Olympics bronze medalist, and the 2017 World Champion. In 2019, Kendricks set the Ameri ...

. A series of five straight wins in European competitions marked a new career high as he won the

Gugl Games The Gugl Games, formerly known as the Gugl-Meeting and the Zipfer Grand Prix, is the largest one-day athletics meet in Austria, and is held at the Linzer Stadion in Linz. Founded in 1988 the Gugl-Meeting was an IAAF Grand Prix-status event from 199 ...

in a best of , improved further to at the Liege Meeting, before finally going on to vault a personal record of in

Landau Landau ( pfl, Landach), officially Landau in der Pfalz, is an autonomous (''kreisfrei'') town surrounded by the Südliche Weinstraße ("Southern Wine Route") district of southern Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is a university town (since 1990 ...

. He competed at the

IAAF Diamond League The Diamond League is an annual series of elite track and field athletic competitions comprising fourteen of the best invitational athletics meetings. The series sits in the top tier of the World Athletics (formerly known as the IAAF) one-day mee ...

season-ending

Memorial Van Damme The Memorial Van Damme is an annual athletics event at the King Baudouin Stadium in Brussels, Belgium, that takes place in late August or early September. Previously one of the IAAF Golden League events, it is now the final event of the Diamond L ...

and placed fourth. Given his performances (his new best ranked him second in the world that year, only behind the world record holder

Renaud Lavillenie Renaud Lavillenie ( or ; born 18 September 1986) is a French pole vaulter. Lavillenie won the gold medal at the 2012 Olympics in London and the silver medal at the 2016 Olympics in Rio. In addition to his Olympic success, he has won three Wor ...

) he was selected to represent the Americas team at the

. He placed third behind Lavillenie and

Xue Changrui Xue Changrui (; born 31 May 1991) is a Chinese track and field athlete who competes in the pole vault. His personal best is 5.82 m. He was the champion at the Asian Athletics Championships in 2013 and at the Asian Games in 2014. Career ...

– his first international top three finish.Mulkeen, Jon (2014-09-14)
Europe victorious at IAAF Continental Cup, Marrakech 2014
IAAF. Retrieved on 2014-11-06.

Personal bests

*Pole vault outdoors: (2014) *Pole vault indoors: (2014)

National titles

**Pole vault:

2010 File:2010 Events Collage New.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2010 Chile earthquake was one of the strongest recorded in history; The Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland disrupts air travel in Europe; A scene from the opening ceremony of ...

USA Indoor Track and Field Championships The USA Indoor Track and Field Championships is an annual indoor track and field competition organized by USA Track & Field, which serves as the American national championships for the sport. In years which feature a World Indoor Championships in ...

**Pole vault: 2011,

2014 File:2014 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Stocking up supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic; Citizens examining the ruins after the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping; Bundles of wat ...

International competitions

References

External links

*
Mark Hollis USA homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hollis, Mark 1984 births Living people American male pole vaulters World Athletics Championships athletes for the United States Olivet Nazarene University alumni People from Freeport, Illinois Sportspeople from the Rockford metropolitan area, Illinois Sportspeople from Illinois Athletes (track and field) at the 2015 Pan American Games Medalists at the 2015 Pan American Games Pan American Games bronze medalists for the United States in athletics (track and field) USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships winners USA Indoor Track and Field Championships winners Olivet Nazarene Tigers men's track and field athletes