Imagine setting personal bests in every track meet of the season.
For a track and field athlete, that sounds like a dream, but that’s what redshirt sophomore thrower for the Oregon track and field team Maddie Rabing did last indoor season.
Rabing, a human physiology major with a focus on pre-med, set personal bests in all four meets she competed in. She set the third-best throw in program history for the weight throw and sixth best in the shot put. Now, she’s back to throwing outdoors, where the hammer throw takes over from the weight throw.
Rabing took to track and field in middle school, and then she worked with club coaches to polish her throwing in high school. She excelled and won four 6A Oregon state championships in the shot put. Adjusting to the weight throw was a challenge because the hammer and weight throws are not sanctioned events in high school, and therefore she didn’t have a lot of experience with them.
“Last year, it always felt so heavy, and I didn’t know how to get speed behind it,” Rabing said. “I could only think about how heavy it was and try to throw it as hard as I can.”
Rabing’s coach, Erik Whitsitt, has trained her to have better technique as well as strength. He brings high-energy enthusiasm that Rabing loves.
“People joke they can hear him across the track when he’s excited about a throw,” she said.
Whitsitt, Oregon’s throw coach for the past six seasons, believes Rabing is highly coachable, and as she gained more experience in practice, she was able to make small strides, then perform on the big stage. All the time, he said, she stayed calm, cool and collected.
“Maddie’s a pretty even keeled kind of athlete,” Whitsitt said. “She takes the highs in stride and takes her lows in stride. She keeps trucking along.”
Head coach Robert Johnson said Whitsitt’s technical training has finally started to click for Rabing.
“Erik has once again taken the approach to where they’ve really kind of honed in on her deficiencies and making her a better technician of the event,” Johnson said.
Rabing broke the 60-foot barrier once last season at the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championships. At the season opener this year, the University of Washington Preview was a chance to prove it was no fluke. Five of Rabing’s six throws, all over 60 feet, were better than her previous record.
She continued her trend at the Razorback Invitational, the Husky Classic and then finally concluded at the MPSF invite, where she threw 68 feet, 2 1/2 inches — 3 feet farther than her previous best and good for second overall in the weight throw.
“[Getting a PR] every meet was nice,” Rabing said. “I could just focus on that. And if I didn’t win, I couldn’t be upset about it because I did better than I’ve ever done. It kept things positive throughout the season.”
Rabing believes her weight throw is usually a sign of how her hammer throwing season will go. She knows that if she can reach her best consistently in the outdoor season, as she did in indoor, she will be a force to be reckoned with.
