Frank Chipman Higgins
Higgins Vaults Ever Higher– Sets Another Record
Although he participated in several sports, including rugby while a student at Horton Academy and during four years at Acadia University, Frank Higgins is remembered for his outstanding work in track and field. While still a student at Horton, he set a record of 9 feet 91/2 inches in the pole vault in the days when the pole used for vaulting was a long length of bamboo with a sharp point at the bottom. The winning vault of 10 feet 6 inches at the 1896 Olympics makes Higgins’ school-boy record even more amazing.
A new pole vault record by Higgins was a regular occurrence at Acadia track and field events during the 1910-1914 period. During the 23 May 1912 intercollegiate meet, he broke the Maritime intercollegiate record for pole vault. “In pole vault, Higgins, Acadia, went 10 feet 9 3/4 inches, breaking the previous record of ten feet.” In that meet he was also second in the broad jump. Two years later, during the 1914 intercollegiate meet, he not only won the pole vault, high jump and broad jump, he set a pole vault record of 11' 3/4". That record still stood in 1933, despite advances that had been made in the construction and composition of the pole itself.
During the 1914 Acadia interclass track and field competition, Higgins was the overall high scorer and received “the cup given by Mr Williams,” and as the high scorer for the field events, “received the cup from Mr Shand.” In fact, Higgins was a one-man track team for his class, and scored all the points claimed by the Class of 1914 during that meet.
After graduation in 1914, Frank Higgins joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and served as a career officer in the Intelligence branch in Canada and overseas.
