EUGENE - It was going to take Erica Bartolina’s best day as an athlete to accomplish her goal.

Bartolina had that day Sunday and a little more at Hayward Field.

The Philomath High School graduate three times set her personal best in the pole vault, eventually clearing 14 feet, 11 inches to finish third in the U.S. Olympic track and field trials to qualify for the Olympic Games in Beijing next month.

“I definitely knew I had a shot, but I really didn’t believe it was going to happen,” said Bartolina, whose previous outdoor PR was

14-51/4.

“I just kept fighting for it and did what it took.“

Bartolina opened the competition Sunday at 14-11/2, which she cleared on her second attempt. She then passed at 14-51/4. It took a clearance on her third and final attempt at 14-71/4 (the Olympic ’A’ standard) for Bartolina to advance. But it wasn’t until her clearance on a third attempt at 14-9 that she had made the team.

She jumped in elation once hitting the mat with her clearance and an Olympic berth secured.

“I think I brushed it a little bit,” Bartolina said. “I was scared, it was my third attempt. I stepped it off and did the run through and knew that was the only chance I would get.”

Jennifer Stuczynski won Sunday’s competition with a new American and trials record of 16-13/4. April Steiner Bennett was second after clearing 15-1.

Bartolina said she twice had third attempts because she didn’t fully commit to her jumps.

“My biggest problem usually is just mental, of hitting the jump and knowing it’s going to be OK,” said Bartolina, whose maiden name was Boren. “I had some of that today, too, but it didn’t get away too much.”

It’s been a long road for Bartolina since her days at Philomath High, where she won a state pole vault title in 1997 as a junior and graduated in 1998. She grew up on her parents 20-acre farm in Kings Valley, where she helped raise the family’s 150 sheep.

She attended Texas A&M for four years and realized she could compete beyond school. She currently trains under her husband, Michael, a coach at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, about 45 minutes from both Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

(“As a power event athlete, the warmer weather is a lot easier to train in,” she says.”)

Besides her husband, Bartolina had plenty of other support Sunday — her parents, two sisters, grandmother, other family, former high school coach Joe Fulton and other past coaches, her former 4H leader and high school classmates she recognized in the stands.

Her training went well entering the meet, as she was healthy for the first time since a fall in training in 2005 that she was still recovering from two years later.

Bartolina took just three attempts to clear two qualifying heights Thursday.

“That really helped me to calm my nerves and come into it confident I could continue doing what I did on Thursday,” she said. “The same venue, the same crowd ... it really allowed me to relax a little bit and focus on what I had to do.”

Bartolina had struggled for more than a year to get back to her best jumping. But that didn’t bother her entering the trials.

“I knew if I just did basic pole vaulting, it was going to be good enough,” she said. “My problem is I get in a meet and I try to do something better than I did in practice and it screws everything up.

“That was my attitude today, ‘don’t try to be better today, just be basic,’ and it worked.”

In Sunday morning’s 20,000-meter race walk final outside Autzen Stadium, Oregon State graduate Stephanie Casey was sixth in 1 hour, 43 minutes, 51 seconds.

Casey, whose best time is 1:41:47 in the 12.4-mile race, needed to place at least third and better the Olympic ’A’ standard of 1:33:00 to make the U.S. team.

Joanne Dow won the race in 1:35:11.