Mount de Sales Academy in Catonsville celebrated its first Olympian on record in school history. Then, that number doubled.
Sisters, track stars and Mount de Sales alumnae Juliette and Bella Whittaker are headed to the Paris Olympics after qualifying for Team USA late last month.
Juliette Whittaker will run the 800 meters, and Bella Whittaker will be part of the relay pool, meaning she could be tapped for either the women’s or mixed 4×400-meter relays.
For Juliette, the youngest of four siblings, the accomplishment has been years in the making. Steve Weber, who recently retired as Mount de Sales’ track and field coach, has thought since the last Olympic cycle that this was coming for her.
“It had some inevitability to it,” Weber said.
In 2021, Whittaker was a rising senior at Mount de Sales when she competed at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, Ore. She recorded the 10th-fastest time in the 800-meter run semifinals, the first woman to miss the cutoff for the final race.
Whittaker has done nothing but climb since then. She went to Stanford University and received coaching from J.J. Clark, whose specialty is the 800 run. At the 2024 NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships, Whittaker set a meet record of 1 minute, 59.53 seconds to win the title. She dominated her event in the outdoor season, too, winning the NCAA championship with a 1:59.61.
Back in Eugene last month, Whittaker reached the final and needed to finish in the top three to qualify for Paris. She ran a personal best 1:58.45 and finished third place.
The race caught some national attention because Athing Mu – the reigning Olympic gold medalist in the 800 – fell when her leg bumped into the runner behind her. Mu’s appeal after the fact did not succeed, meaning she won’t return to the games.
Whittaker knows something about falling. At the 2023 USATF Championships, she was in third in her semifinal race before going to the ground a few strides shy of the finish line.
After becoming an Olympian, last month Whittaker shared a note on Instagram that she’d written herself in July 2023: “This year I fell steps from the finish of the semis. Next year I am making the team.”
“She has inspired so many other runners,” Weber said. “There’s just something about her. She doesn’t run just for herself and the heck with everybody else. She just finds a way to include everybody in the things that she does and to encourage them, too.”
Mount de Sales athletic director Eric Dummann says that even without track, Whittaker would have made it to Stanford anyway. Not only was she academically inclined like her siblings, Whittaker’s leadership qualities stood out both as class president and on the track team.
“The thing that I remember the most about her is she finished first by probably a minute in the IAAM cross country championships a few years ago,” Dummann said. “She just turned around and ran back to cheer on her teammates.”
At Mount de Sales, Whittaker was following in the footsteps of her older sister.
“It’s the only high school I looked at,” she told the Catholic Review in 2021. “Bella was already there. I always pictured myself at Mount de Sales.”
Bella Whittaker, a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, placed sixth in the women’s 400-meter final in Eugene. Juliette Whittaker later shared an Instagram story in which she and her sister celebrated Bella being selected for the relay pool. Team USA is expected to publish its official Olympic roster July 8.
The accomplishment is an honor for the whole family, including the women’s father, Paul Whittaker. Now the head coach at Mount de Sales after sharing duties with Weber for some time, he has guided his daughters to the summit of their sport.
“It was wholly right and proper that her father took over and began giving (Juliette) additional work, began giving her her workouts,” Weber said. “He’s a physical therapist, so anytime there was any physical concern he was there to diagnose and correct. … He deserves a good deal of credit.”
In the 2021 interview with the Catholic Review, Juliette Whittaker said her pre-race rituals always included prayer.
“We always do a team prayer before a meet, and I do my own before a race,” said Whittaker, then a parishioner of St. Joseph in Odenton. “It’s a reminder that there is something much greater than me and this race.”
The Olympic games get underway in Paris July 24 with opening ceremonies scheduled for July 26 and medal events in track and field competition beginning Aug. 1.
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