Girls’ Track Athlete of the Year: Terra Nova’s Carly Watts

“It’s really all about consistency with throwing,” said Watts. “Overall, I was just very pleased about how I threw (this season).”

It was no surprise that Watts could contend in the PAL. She won the titles in both events at the PAL Frosh-Soph Championships in 2017. But it was the improvements she made this season that were the most mind-boggling.

She won the 2017 frosh-soph discus title with a throw of 116 feet, 8 inches and the shot put with a heave of 32-8 1/2. In March, Watts set a new Terra Nova record in the discus when she won the St. Francis Invitational with a toss of 137-1.

That is nearly a 21-foot year-to-year improvement and it shattered the previous school record of 132-4.

In April, Watts added the shot put school record to her resume, finishing fifth at the Serra Top 7 Invitational with a heave of 40-8, again bettering the previous record of 39-7.

“[Setting new school records] was the first thing this season that I wanted to accomplish” Watts said. “I didn’t really know (if I could do it). As soon as the meets came around, I was in the 130s in the disc and 30s in the shot put.”

But Watts wasn’t done. At the PAL championships, she had personal records in winning the title in both events, taking the shot put crown with a throw of 43-7 and winning the discus with a mark of 143-9, setting new PAL records in the process. She carried that momentum into CCS, winning the discus on her first throw of 141-7 and winning the shot put crown with a toss of 43-1/2.

“For me, it was pretty easy to keep my focus on the meet right ahead of me,” Watts said. “If I don’t do good in this meet, there won’t be a next meet.”

While she failed to make it out of qualifying in the discus at the State Meet, she was fourth in the shot put qualifying and ultimately settled for a sixth-place finish with a distance of 43-6, giving her a spot on the podium.

“The main goal (this season) was to break the (school) record,” said Terra Nova head track coach Jared Steele. “(After she accomplished that), the possibility of winning CCS entered our minds. Once they were reached, (we said) let’s push the bar even further.”

There was no magic button Watts pushed to soar to such lofty heights. In fact, her ascension can be directly traced to the work she put in to becoming one of the best throwers in the state. Working with her step-father, Rene Nielsen, a competitive power lifter who studied kinesiology, Watts got bigger, stronger, more powerful, became obsessive about technique and practiced throwing. And practiced. And practiced.

“She’d call me up and ask to open the gate (to the throwing pit at Terra Nova) at 7, 8 in the morning on weekends (during the offseason),” Steele said. “Each week, it was a different focus (on her techinque). … Just the reps over and over. She probably threw a thousand times during the track season. Just an incredible work ethic.”

Watts hunger to get better turned her into a role model for the rest of the Terra Nova track team, regardless of what events they participated. Just the way Watts went about preparing for her events showed other what hard work and determination can do.

“At a couple of meets, I told kids to go watch Carly throw,” Steele said. “They’d see her (in practice), doing work off to the side. She’s in the background (during practice), but they see her working and see what she did with all that hard work.”

Watts continues to work hard as she gears up for her senior season. She took a couple weeks off of training immediately after the State Meet, but is already tweaking her techinque in hopes of attaining the ultimate goal: winning both events at the 2019 State Meet.

“For this new techinque I’m doing, I just started on it two weeks ago. But I’m already getting comfortable with it. At the end of next month, I going to try to get in some summer events and just get used to the new technique,” Watts said. “I really didn’t think my numbers were going to jump so high or even make it to State. It was just an amazing season for me, personally.”