From broken bones to breaking records: Throwers find success on Tarleton track team

BY HANNAH BROOKS

Multimedia Journalist

At Tarleton State University, a small group of throwers is quietly shaping meet outcomes, proving that some of track and field’s most overlooked events demand just as much precision and power.

In track and field, teams earn points based on how their athletes place in each event at the conference championship meets, which occur once during the indoor season and once during the outdoor season. The top eight finishers in each event score points for their team. First place gets ten points, second place gets eight points, third place gets six points and so forth until eighth place wins one point.

During the 2025 WAC Outdoor Championships, the throws team contributed 36 points total. While the team competed in several meets leading up to the conference championships, those meets were scored individually rather than as a team.

Senior Taylor Wessley originally attended the University of Kentucky to compete on the rodeo team, and then Chadron State College, a Division II school in Nebraska. She eventually found her way to Tarleton, where she’ll finish her degree in kinesiology.

Wessley specializes in hammer, weight and shot put, with hammer being her favorite event. Since she got to Tarleton in fall 2024, she’s been busy winning points for Tarleton’s track team.

Just last season alone, she scored 14 points in indoor track and 16 points in outdoor, taking second in hammer throw and second in shot put.

She has also placed her name in the Tarleton record books. During the indoor season, Wessley set the school record in weight throw with a mark of 18.48 meters and ranks No. 2 all-time in shot put at 13.91 meters, a mark she set at the Jarvis Scott Invite.

Outdoors, she holds the school record in hammer throw at 53.21 meters and ranks No. 8 in school history in shot put with a throw of 12.94 meters.

Junior Mason Hill faced significant adversity during his first year at Tarleton, breaking his foot twice during the 2023-24 season from stress fractures. Despite the setbacks, he scored points at the indoor conference and bounced back this past spring season to throw a personal best and place third for shot put at outdoor conference.

Hill now ranks No. 2 all-time in Tarleton State history in indoor shot put with a personal record of 16.43 meters set in 2025. He also ranks No. 4 in indoor weight throw at 14.31 meters. Outdoors, Hill sits No. 3 all-time in shot put with a personal record of 17.31 meters and No. 9 in hammer throw at 42.05 meters, both marks set in 2025.

“For the amount of throwers we have, to be able to score like that, that’s really good,” Assistant Coach James Dearth said. “I’m hoping this indoor season will be really good for us… As for Mason, we’re hoping he wins it this year, so I’m hoping for 10 points there and who knows, it could be up to 28 points for the women’s side.”

Dearth’s interest in throwing was sparked in his youth by his family. He was coached by a local man, who happened to be the former coach of one of the greatest high school throwers and Olympic silver medalist, Michael Carter.

Later, after playing in the NFL, he studied how to teach the shot put, and once his kids got older, he started coaching them.

When his son started playing football at Tarleton in 2008 and wanted to come out and throw, Dearth asked the head coach at the time, Pat Ponder, if he needed a throws coach. When Ponder said yes, Dearth became the volunteer throws coach.

“This was a great opportunity for me to get and spend time with my son,” Dearth said, “but after watching these athletes work so hard and getting so close to them, I just couldn’t walk away.”

To this day, Dearth is a volunteer coach.

NCAA’s throwing field events consist of five sports: javelin, shot put, discus, hammer and weight throw. They each have similarities, but uniquely differ in technique.

In hammer throw, athletes spin inside a seven-foot circle while swinging a heavy metal ball attached to a wire. After building speed through multiple rotations, they release it for maximum distance. It’s one of the most technical and rhythm-based throwing events.

In shot put, competitors push a heavy metal ball (16 pounds for men, 8.8 pounds for women) from their neck using either a glide or rotational technique. The goal is to generate explosive power while staying inside the circle.

For discus, athletes spin across the circle and release a flat, circular disc into the air. Discus requires balance and precise angles to maximize flight and distance.

Contested indoors, weight throw is similar to hammer throw but uses a shorter wire and heavier implement. Athletes rotate multiple times before releasing the weight into a netted sector.

In javelin, athletes sprint down a runway carrying a spear-like implement before planting their front foot and launching it overhand into the sector. Unlike the other throws, javelin combines speed, timing and shoulder mechanics to generate distance, and the implement must land tip-first to count as a legal throw.

From the outside, it looks simple: a athlete throws a heavy object far. But inside the circle, nothing is simple.

Every toe turn, every hip angle, every fraction of a second determines whether the throw will go down the middle of the sector or if it flies off to the side, resulting in a “scratch.” The difference between winning a conference title and fouling out can be the width of a heel.

“The idea behind it is to create as much speed and power that you could possibly create through to the end of the throw, and then you stop yourself really, really fast… it can be a violent movement,” Dearth said.

Every inch of foot placement, every fraction of timing, every angle of release has been rehearsed hundreds of times.

“The sport can be really hard on the body,” Wessley said, “because we aren’t really made to throw like this over and over. So from a scientific standpoint, just the fact that we can do this is just really amazing.”