JOHNSTOWN —
Karlee McQuillen’s Olympic dream took a hit on Sunday, but the Westmont Hilltop graduate isn’t giving up on it.
McQuillen, who finished ninth in the women’s javelin competition at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in Eugene, Ore., said she plans to try to make the U.S. team again in 2016.
“I’m going back to Gainesville (Fla.) and I’m going to start training again in the fall,” she said Tuesday from her parents’ home in Westmont. “As long as I stay healthy and everything still goes according to plan, then 2016 is looking bright. I’ll be four years older, four years wiser and, hopefully, four years better.”
McQuillen just turned 23 years old and said that most javelin throwers hit their prime around age 26 or 27, which gives her optimism about her chances for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. But that chance is still four years away, which did little to take the sting out of McQuillen’s missing out on the London Olympic Games.
McQuillen, who was a four-time All-American at Penn State, had a personal best with a throw of 182 feet, 10 inches at the trials on Friday, which was good for third place. But she fell to ninth in Sunday’s final round, when her top throw was 173-8.
“It’s really, really, really disappointing,” McQuillen said. “It’s so disappointing when you know you can do so much better and you’re given the chance in front of track and field’s biggest audience. It’s really unfortunate that I had a bad day when I had it.”
The pressure of knowing that a bad day for an Olympic hopeful could mean waiting four more years for another opportunity made it even more difficult for McQuillen.
“It almost gets in your stomach and turns it upside down,” she said. “You think ‘In another four years am I going to be at this place?’ As long as I stay healthy and concentrate on fixing the big problems, then 2016 isn’t that far away. But you’re not thinking about that then.
“I really thought big things were going to happen on Sunday,” she said.
McQuillen said she had been to events at Eugene – which is known as Tracktown USA – before, but that didn’t prepare her for what she saw there last week.
“They just went above and beyond for these Olympic trials,” she said. “They set up the stadium so that it was like you were in a football stadium. They set up stands to accommodate thousands and thousands of people. NBC was there. I wouldn’t trade anything. Just to throw there was an amazing experience.”
Despite being thousands of miles from Westmont, McQuillen had plenty of support from her hometown.
“Everybody was so wonderful,” she said. “Thank God for Facebook. Everybody went out of their way and made me feel really supported. I got a sense that they felt I could do it. Having your family and friends believe you can do something actually helps. It’s nice to have a good foundation at home when you’re so far away to ground you and know where you came from.”
McQuillen said she plans to spend about a month here before returning to the University of Florida, where she works out with the Gators.
“I’m definitely going to take some time off,” she said. “Whether I get down there in the beginning of August or earlier, I’ll start training in September. I’ll have a good two months off, reflect on what I need to improve on and then get back to it.”
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McQuillen setting her sights on 2016 Games
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