Zatta earns state meet spot in pole vault

Lindsay Zatta, after an afternoon spent pole vaulting under a hot late May sun, clutched a small, plastic, orange, miniature safety cone.

It’s a marker for her steps on the runway, but it’s also a totem, a good luck charm and a reminder — of where she started and where she’s going.

You can find many such items lined along the edges of the pole vault runway, this day a strip of well-maintained black at Pickerington North High School. Chalk, cones, figurines, Zip-loc bags and Tupperware containers were just a few lined up at different points.

LOADING…

But this cone belongs to Zatta, who graduated from Athens High School on Saturday. It was there when she first started to pole vault in high…