After two years of running sprints, he noticed he wasn’t getting any faster, while everyone he was competing against was.

So he switched events. He left the track entirely and chose a field event — the pole vault.

The switch was a wise choice.

In just two seasons, Brunelle has emerged as one of the state’s top vaulters. He placed third at the indoor state championships in February and figures to be in the mix for a medal at the outdoor championships in May. He will continue vaulting next year with the track and field team at East Carolina.

“I saw pole vaulting and I was like, I don’t feel like running anymore,” said Brunelle, now a senior. “I just keep get better at it. Sprinting, I wasn’t getting any better. [Now], I can actually go up and look pretty good.”

Richard Spangler, who coaches Green Hope’s pole vaulters, said Brunelle is a natural for the event. He is slender, fast, athletic and has tremendous body awareness. On top of that, he’s incredibly coachable.

“You tell him something, give him a mental picture, and he translates it into his body,” Spangler said. “It’s unbelievable. You can see it’s all about body position. I’ll tell him visualize, and he immediately translates that into where his body position is going to be, and he puts it there.”

The pole vault is one of the most technical events in sports. It takes a lot in order for a vault to go right and one slip-up in order for one to go wrong.

To start, Brunelle races down the runway, his steps timed and counted out, needing to build up enough energy to transfer to the pole. Near the end of the sprint, he lowers the pole and plants the rounded tip into the box, neither of which are any larger than a tennis ball.

The energy races from his body and the pole begins to bend. If the tip hits the box correctly, the pole unwinds and slings him up toward the bar. If it misses ever-so slightly, the pole might slip out of the box and send him crashing into the pad.

Assuming it all goes according to plan, the energy from the sprint transfers to the pole, then slings Brunelle skyward, his back parallel to the ground and his legs perpendicular. As he gets to the bar, he begins to turn his torso so he’s facing the bar as he flies over it feet first. He then lets go of the pole and descends back to the ground.

“That’s about it,” Brunelle said matter-of-factly.

Through practice, the event has become second nature. But it wasn’t always so simple. One of the first times he tried to pole vault, he went straight up and spun around on the pole.

“He looked like a corkscrew,” Spangler said.

“I was really bad,” Brunelle said.

After a few weeks, Spangler noticed Brunelle was quickly applying everything he instructed him to do.

“Once you get technique down, then it’s a progression of pole length and stronger poles,” Spangler said. “The stronger the pole, the faster it unwinds. It sounds simple: All you have to do is go up. But it screws up timing and requires different kinds of emphasis on different parts of the jump.”

As his junior year went on, Brunelle proved to be a quick study. After starting out the season clearing 9 feet, he was successfully clearing 12-6 by season’s end.

This year, he’s continued that improvement.

He cleared 14 feet at the indoor state championships to finish third. At the Nike Outdoor Nationals in early March, he cleared 14-2 3/4 and finished 17th. And at a dual meet with Panther Creek later in the month, he cleared a personal-best 14-8.

By the end of the season, Brunelle wants to be in the 16-6 range.

“I don’t see any reason we can’t do 16 [feet],” Spangler said.

Brunelle said he would love to be able to give Scott Houston a run for first place at the outdoor championships.

Houston, a senior at Northwest Guilford, is one of the best pole vaulters to ever come out of North Carolina. He won both indoor and outdoor state titles in 2007 by nine inches. He won this year’s indoor title at 16-6, destroying his own meet record by more than a foot. He has a personal best of 16-10 3⁄4.

“I don’t know if I can catch up to him,” Brunelle said, “[but] I’m hoping.”