For most high school athletes, it’s extremely important to stick to the timetable provided by doctors when attempting to return to competition following a serious injury.
After suffering a Lisfranc injury during the indoor track season in January, doctors told Hempfield’s Liz Tapper she was looking at about a six-month rehab process before her foot would return to full strength. Many didn’t expect to see the reigning national champion discus thrower don the blue and white Spartans jersey again — after all, the 2023 PIAA track and field championships would come only four months into her estimated recovery timeline, and the Michigan recruit will have already graduated and begun packing her bags for Ann Arbor by the time her foot fully heals.
What many failed to realize, though — and what Tapper learned about herself — is that ordinary recovery timelines don’t always apply when dealing with extraordinary athletes. Some people are just built different — and Tapper is living proof.
“This injury is very, very slow healing, so honestly I would be extremely happy just to get back to where I was last year,” Tapper said. “No nationals this year, but we’re looking forward to my college career and all this other stuff, so I’m getting ready for that.”
Only three months removed from the debilitating foot injury, the reigning WPIAL and PIAA champion in both the shot put and discus was back to her history-making ways at the Butler Invitational on Friday. Going back and forth with reigning PIAA Class 2A champion Justley Sharp of Homer Center, Tapper dug deep to beat out Sharp in both events while breaking a pair of meet records in the process. Tapper’s record-setting shot put of 44-8 beat Sharp by two feet, and her top discus throw of 143-1 went nine feet beyond Sharp’s best, marking the top distances in each event in the 21-year history of the girl’s meet.
“I texted her the records last night, and I said, ‘I want your name on these records tomorrow,’” Hempfield throws coach Dave Murray said. “I keep telling her, it doesn’t matter how we start, it’s how we finish this year. When you’re coming off an injury like that that should have been season-ending, everything is a bonus at this point.
“We just want to have a big finish.”
Tapper had competed in a few smaller meets in recent weeks as she began her surprise comeback tour, but she had no plans of taking part in the Butler Invitational — that is, until a last-minute change by Hempfield coach Ron Colland after a peek at the weather report for the weekend. The Spartans were originally scheduled to attend the Slippery Rock High School Invitational on Saturday, but Colland decided to instead register the team for Friday’s Butler Invitational just before Wednesday’s deadline.
This was the first time the Hempfield girls ever attended the Butler Invitational, and the late switch allowed Tapper a chance to avenge a loss against Sharp at last week’s Hempfield Invitational. And although they were locked in an intense battle on Friday, Tapper and Sharp exchanged plenty of support for each other before and after their throws. Tapper said Sharp is a good friend of hers, and the rivalry between the two is rooted in the desire to see each other succeed — a common and admirable theme among many top track and field athletes.
“I told her, ‘Justley is a great thrower. Justley is a state champion,’” Murray said. “[Sharp] got her at the right time, today Liz won, and they’ll go against each other one more time at the Baldwin Invitational. It’s a friendly rivalry.”
Of course, everybody wants to win, and there had to be some throwers across the state who wouldn’t have complained had Tapper decided to sit out her senior season while recovering from her injury. But most real competitors want to go against the best, and everybody loves to gather around the circle and watch in awe as Tapper launches abnormally heavy objects into orbit — even those trying to beat her.
And yes, “trying” is the key word there.
“It’s definitely awesome,” Tapper said about setting a pair of meet records on Friday. “It’s a great way to kind of start the season.”
Before her Lisfranc injury, Tapper had high hopes of trying to obtain one or both of the WPIAL records in the discus and shot put, ranking second all time in the discus with a personal-best mark of 164-4 and fourth all time in the shot put at 48-0.5. Rather than lower the bar for what she hopes to achieve while competing at less than 100% this spring, Tapper has instead set her goals even higher. She now says she wants the state record in the discus on top of the WPIAL records in both.
For anybody else, that might be dismissed as crazy talk. But for Tapper? Anything is possible.
“She’s getting better every single day,” Murray said. “I’m incredibly proud of her and her toughness. I always knew she was a tough kid, and she’s a competitor, too. … When the game is on the line, I trust her 100%.”
Steve is a sports writer at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at srotstein@unionprogress.com.
