Tioga Elementary School student and one of the Ranch Cities’ brightest young sports stars, Talia Horton, took the first steps of her athletic career this summer, winning gold at the 2026 Mac Vault Summer National Championships pole vaulting competition July 24.
Talia blazed her way down the ramp for the first time this season, beginning her training this spring and culminating with her competing at the national- level event in Navasota, where she set a new personal record of 4-feet-6-inches to finish in first.
“I’m absolutely floored at how much progress she’s made in such a short period of time,” Talia’s father and coach, Troy Horton, said. “When she started on May 4th, she could barely swing herself up onto the landing pad, to now where she can clear a crossbar that’s over her head is nothing short of amazing.”
Talia, who comes from a family of pole vaulters, said her father and older brother Jayson Stogner were her biggest inspiration to start pole vaulting.
“I saw them jumping high, and I said maybe I can do that too someday,” she said.
Despite growing up around the sport and even having a great uncle, Glenn Engelland, who was a collegiate pole vaulter, Talia said her first time trying to launch herself through the air proved challenging.
“I thought, ‘I don’t know how to do this, but I’ll keep trying, and I’ll get better,’” she said.
Talia continued practicing at home and started training with pole vaulting coaches Vladimir Kalmykov and Ekaterina Kalmykova at Keys Athletics in Haslet.
She said working on her technique has been the biggest lesson so far.
“I learned I had to start trying to get my feet all the way up to the bar,” Talia said.
Once she was ready, Talia took part in her first competition at the Off the Grid Summer Jam on June 13 in Granbury, where she finished fourth in the 8U division with a height of 3-feet-3-inches.
“I tried to jump high, and I was pretty close to doing 3-feet-6-inches,” she said.
And “jump high” she did, with Talia improving her personal best multiple times at the competitions that followed.
She cleared 3-feet-6inches less than a week later at the Port Aransas Beach Vault on June 19, followed by a new personal best of 4-feet-three-inches at the Texas Express Don Isett Invitational in Princeton on July 18, where she won first place in the 8U division.
“She went over to Princeton and had a breakthrough,” Troy said. “She started to do what she’s been doing in practice.”
Talia said one of her biggest motivators is outperforming her older brother, Jayson, who is the current boys pole-vaulting record holder for Tioga Independent School District, and Jayson said he couldn’t be happier.
“It’s awesome that she’s looking at me for motivation, and I’ve worked harder this summer because I know she’s watching,” he said. “… I think it helps us both, and I think it would be even more [amazing] for two siblings to dominate the record board at Tioga in women’s and men’s pole vaulting; that would be a dream come true.”
With the national championship out of the way, Talia will wrap up her first season of competition at the Texas Express Jump for Dylan Meet on Saturday at the Texas Express Training Center in Princeton.
“I’m just so proud of her for deciding she wanted to do it, because up until that point I’d ask, ‘Do you want to start pole vaulting like Daddy and [Jayson]?' and she'd say, ‘No, it's scary,' and then one day, she said, ‘I’m ready,’' Talia’s mother, Susan Horton, said. “She just decided she wanted to do it and beat her big brother in the medal count department, and she’s done so well already.'
