When most Blue Valley Southwest students were on vacation or hanging out with friends during spring break, there was a family of mice taking over the pole vault and high jump mats.
“They created a nest and ate the padding,” pole vault coach Rich Troxel said. “They just burrowed a bunch of holes in them.”
Troxel did not see it as much of a problem, but when the pole vaulters were getting ready to set up the mats for practice once school resumed, eight mice were all of a sudden under their feet.
“Everyone was freaking out and screaming,” sophomore pole vaulter Grant Stephens said. “There was poop everywhere, but we got most of it off. It was still pretty disgusting.”
The group of mice were definitely planning on making the mats their permanent home, because there were also a couple of babies along with the eight adult mice.
Troxel thought the holes were not a big deal, and neither did Stephens.
“You don’t really land on where they were, but if we do then we just get quickly off,” Stephens said. “It’s still gross though. We’re just going to forget it all happened.”
Troxel says the damage to the mats was not significant enough for them to need replacement.
“They’re not unusable,” he said. “We’re just going to deal with it, because those mats are really expensive. Replacing them is out of the question.”
Having mice around the track and field equipment isn’t rare; Troxel has seen them before, but not actually inside of the track equipment.
“They’re always around all of the stuff,” he said. “There’s droppings everywhere in the shed. They just happened to get into our stuff and damage it.”
The team will continue to use the mats throughout the rest of the season, but will most likely replace them for next year.