Wiltrout joins elite company
Wins fourth gold in a row in javelin
SHIPPENSBURG, Pa. — In the literal sense, Connellsville’s Madison Wiltrout doesn’t let anyone put their hands on her PIAA gold medals. She keeps them in a box because they mean so much to her and “I don’t want anyone touching them,” she said.
In the figurative sense, only a few can touch Wiltrout’s PIAA gold-medal collection.
For the fourth consecutive year, Wiltrout stepped to the top step on the winners stand before they hung a gold medal around her neck. On the final day of the
PIAA track and field championships Saturday at Shippensburg University, Wiltrout won the Class 3A javelin for the fourth consecutive year and leaves as one of the most accomplished track and field athletes from Western Pennsylvania.
Wiltrout became only the fourth athlete from the WPIAL — male or female — to win an event four consecutive years. Wiltrout, the national high school recordholder in the event, won her fourth PIAA title with a throw of 160 feet, 9 inches.
The only other WPIAL athletes to win an event four years in a row are Greensburg Central Catholic’s Colleen Rosensteel (discus from 1982-85), Beaver Falls’ Candy Young (hurdles 1977-80) and Wilmington’s Kathy Travers (shot put 1978-81). Wiltrout now is rubbing elbows with the elite. Young eventually made a U.S. Olympic team and Rosensteel made the Olympics in judo. Wiltrout, by the way, will throw at the University of North Carolina.
Wiltrout had her winning throw on her first of six attempts in the competition.
“This really is the one I wanted from the beginning, from when I stood up on that [winners] stand when I was in ninth grade and set a goal to win all four,” Wiltrout said. “I finally did it.”
But the road to the title was anything but smooth. As a sophomore, Wiltrout set the national record with a throw of 185-8 and then set a PIAA championship record at 182-8. But on her third throw at the PIAA meet in 2015, something popped in her elbow and she didn’t throw again. She sustained a torn ulnar ligament in her right elbow (throwing elbow) and had Tommy John surgery in the summer of 2015.
She wasn’t 100 percent a year ago, but still won a third PIAA title. This spring, she started having some pain again in the elbow. She cut back throwing at practice and threw only once at the WPIAL championships, but that was all she needed to win a title.
“The pain wasn’t as bad as it was at WPIALs, so I just kept throwing,” she said. “When I threw that 160, it definitely was a huge relief. I knew if I hit 160, it would be hard for someone to get there.”
Wiltrout admitted it’s hard to accept the fact that she never got close to that national record after the injury.
“Every day I think about it,” she said. “But I don’t let it ruin me. … It bothered me some that I wouldn’t be able to throw maybe what everyone wanted, or what I wanted [at the PIAA meet]. But I got here and realized it’s about winning and not about hitting a number.”
But she hit four, and that’s hard to touch.