Prior to her freshman year, she had never heard of shot put. Now she's among state's best.
There is a patch of grass out here behind the condemned football bleachers overgrown with vines, tucked between Brooks and West 12th Street, where one of the state’s top track and field athletes spends her spring afternoons.
Lariah Wooden did not know anything about a shot put going into her freshman year at Crispus Attucks. She was a basketball player who also dabbled in soccer. An athlete? Sure. But not in track and field.
“At first I was like, ‘What is a shot put?’” Wooden said. “I hadn’t even heard of it.”
Joe Collins, throws coach and biology teacher at Attucks, remembers that first conversation he had with Wooden about coming out for shot put. “She thought I was crazy,” Collins said. But she agreed to come out after basketball season freshman year and give it a try.
As it turns it out, she was a natural. She reached the regional at Ben Davis as a freshman in the spring of 2021 and nearly qualified for state with a shot put of 38-0 ½ despite a COVID-related break that caused the team to get sent home and miss several practices leading up to the sectional.
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“She was less than a foot short of qualifying for state as a freshman,” Attucks coach Laitham Louthen said. “She was the only freshman in the regional for throws. And she’d only been in three meets in her life.”
Two years later, Wooden has bigger goals. She placed third in the large school indoor state meet behind Bloomington North junior Hadley Lucas and Center Grove senior Shelby Wingler, putting a personal-best 42-9 earlier in the indoor season. Though the outdoor season has started a bit slower than she would like this spring (she won the Shortridge meet Saturday with a 40-8), there is good reason.
“She’s a very strong and explosive athlete,” Louthen said. “As a coach with experience working with throws, I could tell she would be able to catch up with anybody once we got her working on her technique and form. We’re working hard now to get her caught up with everybody else who started throwing in elementary and middle school so her natural ability can take over.”
Much of Wooden’s practice time is spent focusing on footwork. When she started as a freshman and even last year as a sophomore, she was simply muscling the shot put. She starts every practice now working on her rotation, which will allow her to gain leverage and, hopefully and eventually, more distance.
There is, at times, visible frustration from Wooden, who expresses it mostly through silence. “Last year at the state meet she got 11th and wouldn’t even talk to me,” Louthen said. “She went up to the stands, walked toward the bus and didn’t talk to me for a like a day-and-a-half. She’s very much that way.”
But it is the combination of upside, natural ability and relative inexperience that has Louthen and a number of college coaches intrigued. If she can go nearly 43 feet without refined technique and barely two years of experience, how far can she take it? Coaches from Purdue, Iowa, Pittsburgh, Eastern Michigan, Murray State, UAB, Ohio, Bowling Green and Illinois State have all invited her to visit campus.
“I want to go all the way with this,” Wooden said. “I want to go to the Olympics. I want my name everywhere, not just to be some regular shot putter.”
Bloomington North’s Lucas is so far ahead of the field it is probably not even fair to put her in the same category as the rest of the state. The Wisconsin recruit pulled the double-double as a sophomore, winning the shot put and discus. Her best so far this outdoor season is 50-0. Next in line are Center Grove senior Wingler (47-6), Greensburg junior Emarie Jackson (47-5) and Noblesville junior Hannah Alexander (46-1).
Louthen and Collins have no doubt Wooden can put herself in the same range.
“The two people (at the indoor state meet) are just both better with technique,” Collins said. “Physically, I think she’s stronger than both of them. She just needs more experience. We need more kids at the middle-school level doing this stuff.”
As a freshman, Wooden had no frame of reference to know if she was good at the shot put. Her sophomore year was different, though she admits she “still didn’t know what I was capable of.” An 11th place finish was not where she wanted to be, but approaching her best probably would have put her in neighborhood of fourth to sixth.
“I was disappointed, but it was my first year going to state,” she said. “Everybody else had been there so I was like, ‘I can’t hold my head too low.’ I just gotta do it again. It made me work harder. It was an eye-opener for me.”
Wooden was the only girl from an Indianapolis Public School to make state last year and only the second total (Tech senior Jaylen Grimes finished seventh in the boys 400). The people ahead of Wooden in the state likely all have better facilities and equipment. Wooden, who also participates in the discus, said there are no excuses, though.
“I’ll work with it,” she said. “I feel like it’s not really a struggle. It would be a struggle if we didn’t have it at all, but we’ve got it so I can work with it. I’m not going to put that as a disadvantage because some girls out there have to go to someone else’s track. I’m grateful that we’ve got what we’ve got. It is what it is. As long as we’ve got a disc and a shot put, I’m fine.”
There will be chances this spring for Wooden to measure herself against some of the best competition in the state prior to the sectional. The Sling ‘Em Invite at North Central is scheduled for May 6 and the City meet two days later will be season markers for Wooden, who said she learns a lot by watching her competition.
“We all talk and it’s an ‘everybody knows everybody’ thing,” she said. “We all give kudos to each other. If we get a good throw, we tell each other. It’s like a big ol' community... Some of the girls I talk to have been doing it for nine or 10 years, though, so I always watch and take notes about what I’m watching and try to learn from it.”
Wooden laughs about the reaction she receives when she tells people she’s only been competing in the shot put for barely two years.
“They are surprised,” she said. “They tell me to keep working and that if I’ve only been doing it that long, I’m only going to get better.”
Wooden admits it has been an “uphill battle” this season as she refines her footwork. But she knows that getting that part of it down is imperative to how far she can take it. “You can be the strongest girl out there and if your footwork is trash, you are going anywhere,” she said. Her goal for the end of this season is to get in the neighborhood of 45 feet, then build on that going into her senior season.
“She’s pretty remarkable,” Collins said. “If I was going make somebody be a shot putter, it would pretty much be her.”
Wooden said she intends to play basketball and soccer this season, but may focus on weightlifting and preparing for her senior year of track next year.
“I’m definitely working non-stop this summer,” she said. “Let’s see how far I can go.”
Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IHSAA track and field: Lariah Wooden opening eyes with shot put throws
