As Josie Puelz is asked to reflect on the highs and the lows of five years as a Concordia Bulldog, she can’t help but feel a bit teary-eyed. The tears well up mostly because of how blessed she’s been from a wholistic life perspective. Now she is coming to grips with the closure of that chapter of her life. Josie is happy to cover the full spectrum, from the national titles to her challenging fifth year to the happiest of memories that include her showing off that signature wide smile while surrounded by the teammates and coaches she loves.
It would be easy to simply focus Josie’s story upon the success alone – there was plenty of that. However, Josie isn’t the type of person who’s comfortable with her identity being tied solely to athletic accomplishments. Go ahead and introduce her as a five-time national champion and watch her squirm.
Josie would much prefer to discuss enriching life experiences and relationships and her strong Christian faith, of course. Says Josie, “I’m an emotional person so I would just be a mess all the time if I constantly reflected on it (her career). It’s just been an absolute blessing. That’s the only word that I really have for it. I look back on my time here and I can see exactly why I was here in each season of life. Knowing how things have played out, I would have never dreamt of being anywhere else. What fabulous coaches and teammates I was fortunate to have.”
With class, character and that big smile, Puelz went on a three-year tear that saw her win five consecutive NAIA pole vault national championships while breaking the Concordia indoor and outdoor records and rewriting the GPAC championship meet record books. Academically, the Lincoln Lutheran High School alum carried a 4.0 grade point average for her entire college career while studying Elementary Education with a concentration in K-12 Physical Education. She’s also been named the NAIA women’s track & field All-American of the Year by College Sports Communicators and was voted homecoming queen.
We could go on, but you get the picture. Josie is one of those well-rounded student-athletes who set an exceptionally high standard. When she walks into a room, she lights it up with an engaging personality and an ability to connect with all types of people. Within Concordia’s campus, if you didn’t know her for her many accomplishments, you knew her for her outgoing and caring nature.
Pole vault coach Jason Berry has been by her side throughout the five-year college journey. Athletic skill isn’t what Berry thinks about first when it comes to Puelz. Says Berry, “I absolutely love her as a person and who she is – her heart and her faith. It’s hard not to love her. She’s an amazing young lady. The coaching part was a chance for us to spend time together doing something we both loved. You just really enjoy that. She’s an amazing person first and foremost. It was just a blessing to coach her.”
Berry admits that he may have danced a little jig when Josie first informed him of her decision to become a Bulldog. The daughter of parents who were both college athletes, Josie stayed close to home at the same institution that accelerated the personal growth of her father John. Roughly 30 years before Josie’s arrival on the scene, John helped lead the Concordia Men’s Basketball team of 1991-92 to the NAIA national semifinals. Josie’s uncle Todd Voss later became head coach for Bulldog Women’s Basketball.
In other words, Concordia was part of the family history. A young Josie would attend games coached by Voss and would grab snacks from her uncle’s office. As she grew older, Josie became more and more athletically inclined. Her experience in gymnastics eventually led to her giving pole vault a try at the urging of LPS pole vault coach Chris Johnson. Josie enjoyed it so much that she began renting poles and taking private lessons. As Josie said, “I fell in love with it.”
The apex of Josie’s high school athletic career came her senior year at Lincoln Lutheran when she won four golds at one state meet and led the Warriors to a Nebraska state championship. The results meant Puelz would not fly under the radar as she began life as a Concordia Bulldog. Expectations were high for Puelz, who came into the program at the same time as Berry’s son Chase, another high achieving Nebraska prep vaulter.
Puelz had the opportunity to go to bigger schools, but Concordia had something the others did not. “When I was looking for a college, it was a very stressful decision for me because I didn’t want to choose wrong,” Puelz said. “After each visit, I was like, ‘That was really good. How am I going to know which is the right place for me?’ While lots of other universities had a lot to offer, the focus points were a little bit different. Coming to Concordia felt very natural because I stepped into an immediate community where I had people who cared about me and who I loved to be around. They are people who inspire me and have faith at the forefront of their lives. That was evident in every aspect of Concordia, which ultimately drew me here.”
It was clear early on that Josie was going to put together a special career. That first indoor season of 2020, Puelz won the GPAC pole vault title and then placed third at the NAIA national championships. That’s when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and led Puelz (and many other athletes nationally) to reevaluate the path ahead. Because of the dynamics brought on by COVID, Puelz made the decision that she would stick around for five years with a revised plan that fit her academic pursuits and career aspirations.
The pandemic did nothing to hold back Puelz, who came off the break with a vengeance. As only a sophomore, Josie swept NAIA pole vault national titles while blowing away all reasonable expectations. Nothing would quite be the same for Josie, who now had the target squarely on her back. Naturally, the questions shifted to – how many could she win? And how high could she go?
The answer: higher than any GPAC women’s vaulter had ever gone before. Puelz broke the GPAC outdoor meet record in 2021 and then claimed the GPAC indoor meet record in 2022. She shattered school records in clearing 13’ 5 ¼ indoor and 13’ 7 ¼” outdoor. All the while, she obsessed over jumping that next bar.
Says Puelz, “If I could have laid out a vision for what my career was going to look like, that was pretty close to what I would have wanted because I am competitive and I hate settling for mediocrity. I wanted to push the standards and go after records wholeheartedly. I was so fortunate and blessed that it became a reality for me, especially so early on. I have teammates who pushed me really hard and supported me along the way. I was definitely fostered by the community around me to be set up for success.”
As the pressure mounted on Puelz to repeat as a national champion, she kept rising to the occasion. At most national meets, there were typically only a handful of competitors that had a shot to match Puelz vault for vault. Berry even joked that Josie would have time to read a whole book before she finally entered the competition at a national meet – no need to bother with the opening heights. It almost became a shock at the 2023 outdoor national meet when Puelz ‘settled’ for second place.
“Looking back at the championships, I don’t know if there’s one that was greater than the others,” Berry said. “I know that each one became more difficult. Each one came with a different set of competitors that were gunning for her and trying to beat her at nationals. She had this huge target on her back. To do that for five in a row was just amazing. I don’t know if there’s any female pole vaulters who have won five national titles in a row at any level. You have to win on that day and that takes something special to do. She was able to put together a string that was amazing.”
As that string was snapped in 2023, Puelz looked ahead to one final year of competition. It wasn’t smooth sailing despite her truckload of first-place conference and national medals. For a competitor like Puelz, the past was the past. She wanted to make year five as a Bulldog her best one yet. Unfortunately, her indoor season was sidetracked by a bout with mono and things were never quite the same. Puelz had also been seeing a sport psychologist as she dealt with moments of self-doubt and unforeseen circumstances.
On top of her academic work and training schedule, Puelz added student teaching to her plate this past fall semester. She managed to juggle it all exceptionally well before mono hit her hard early during the 2024 indoor season. There was a two-week period in which she did little more than sit in a chair and binge episodes of Percy Jackson on Disney Plus. That’s not something elite athletes like Puelz are used to.
Says Puelz, “I was surrounded by a lot of people who were saying, ‘When you look back, you want to be able to say that you pushed through it and you gave all that you had.’ I really, really struggled for a while because I was so miserable and I was so frustrated with how the vault was going. I tried talking to a sports psychologist and we tried talking through some things. A lot of it comes down to fear of failure. I was able to make some progress. I tried coming back in the spring and I had mono. I was out for like two or three weeks where I couldn’t even vault.”
In one of her last displays of greatness from a college athletics standpoint, Puelz persevered and claimed an All-America medal at the 2024 NAIA indoor national meet. She rose to the podium for the eighth and final time of her storied career. In attempting to reclaim her joy of competition, Josie tried her hand at the multi events during the outdoor season. She shook off a sprained ankle and qualified for the conference meet despite very little training in most of the events that make up the heptathlon.
As Josie offered, “While this year didn’t go at all like I had imagined it for myself, I was still able to find a lot of joy in what I was doing and the people I was around. It just took a little bit of a detour. That’s okay. I’ve had my fair share of highs in my career.”
She can be at peace with everything that occurred, good and bad, because Josie is more than just an athlete. The positive impact she will have as an educator is likely to far exceed anything she achieved while wearing the Concordia colors. Before many of the accolades were attained by Puelz, her father John attempted to pinpoint what made Josie so special.
Said John in late 2021, “Her faith is basically everything to her. She’s there to share what she has with other people. She’s been such a blessing to us. She’s very humble in everything she does. She’s put in a lot of hard work. Some people don’t even realize the amount of hard work she puts in with academics and athletics. She’s at home during break doing workouts. It makes me hurt seeing the workouts she does.”
As teammate Rachel Battershell remarked of Josie in 2023, “You see how gracefully she handles everything and how much joy she brings into it despite the immense pressure. It’s really refreshing and inspiring to me. To the team as a whole, she’s just a beacon of joy. She’s so funny and everyone loves her. On top of that, she works so hard. She’s a leader on the team.”
She sure is Josie Puelz, the five-time national champion, but that’s not how those who know her best will remember her time at Concordia. “She really lives her faith and who she is with her actions in competition and who she is towards others,” Berry said. “I don’t think Josie’s story is just one moment. It’s the character she has and how she handles herself. I was always thoroughly impressed. She is a wonderful person who achieved amazing things.”
It's all enough to make Josie slightly emotional. She jokes that she’s going to have to work on that. After all, she doesn’t want to be breaking down in front of her sixth-grade students beginning this fall at Lincoln Lutheran. One thing is certain: Josie will bring the same passion – and the same big smile – to all her vocations.
Says Josie, “I am thankful to have an able body to be able to compete and be surrounded by people that I love. It’s been the time of my life.”