Ohio State senior Adelaide Aquilla will compete in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics for Team USA in shot put. Credit: Courtesy of Ohio State Dept. of Athletics
Since her arrival at Ohio State, Adelaide Aquilla has defied all odds.
The senior thrower arrived in Columbus as a walk-on, but has since dominated the NCAA shot put scene — winning two indoor and an outdoor national title, on top of two indoor and outdoor Big Ten titles.
Bringing her dominance to the international stage, Aquilla represented Team USA in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. In the preliminary round, Aquilla fell short of qualifying for the final — finishing 20th with a top throw of 17.68.
“She’s nowhere near the same athlete that she was when she came on campus. Even who she was as a recruit, she’s just developed so much in such a short period of time,” Ohio State assistant track and field coach Ashley Kovacs said. “You have a goal for an athlete, an endgame goal for an athlete, and she’s surpassed all of the benchmarks I set for her so quickly. I think a lot of that is a testament to how willing she was to be fully committed to the process.”
Prior to her arrival in Columbus, Aquilla was between a scholarship offer from Miami University and walking on to join Kovacs at Ohio State.
Ultimately, Aquilla decided to walk on, citing her ability to develop her skills further at Ohio State than she would have in Oxford, Ohio.
“I definitely knew I wanted to throw in college,” Aquilla said. “I was heavily considering Miami, but I saw a better potential to compete against the Big Ten and the better competition, at the time, here. I saw more room for growth and development into a better thrower, so I ultimately chose Ohio State.”
Kovacs, who was heavily involved in Aquilla’s recruitment, emphasized her inexperience prior to her career at Ohio State, but pointed to her attitude as a driving factor for her success in her collegiate career.
“When she called me to kinda say, ‘I’m not sure I’m going to be able to come,’ I just told her, ‘If you want to see how good you can become, this is the best place to be,’ and she was bought into that,” Kovacs said. “I just liked her competitive attitude and I knew that she was pretty green, so there were a lot of things that I was intrigued by.”
During her freshman year, Aquilla was held out of the indoor season, but thanks to the strides she was able to make during that time, she earned a spot on the outdoor team — where she began to make her mark.
Following a meet that season, Aquilla took a picture of one of her teammate’s medals to remind herself of what she was building towards.
“She had a story where Nick [Demaline] won Big Tens and she asked Nick to see his medal and she took a picture of it and saved it in her phone and said she was going to get one of these,” Kovacs said.
Aquilla has been a dominant force in the Big Ten over the past two years.
Her efforts this past season alone earned her the title of Big Ten Field Athlete of the Year in both the indoor and outdoor seasons.
Aquilla’s dominance does not end in the Big Ten, however. She also picked up NCAA titles during both the indoor and outdoor seasons.
Aquilla said her success is rooted in her ability to hone in and focus on what only she can control.
“Going into a lot of competitions, we don’t really focus on what the outcome is going to be,” Aquilla said. “We just focus on what I want to do and how I want to pre-train my throw and how I want to accomplish my goals technically.”
The Rocky River, Ohio, native attributed the leaps she made this past season to how she attacked the weight room during the pandemic — pointing to the squat rack that her father welded which allowed her to continue strength training while in quarantine.
“I had a little squat rack set up in my garage and it was just enough for me to bench and squat,” Aquilla said. “It was enough for me to make some physical jumps in the weight room, so that was a very good and beneficial part of the quarantine.”
Prior to this season, Aquilla said her goal was to qualify for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, but thanks to her dominance over the course of the past year, her ultimate goal was fast-tracked.
“Starting my junior year, I always thought I could be an Olympic-caliber athlete, but I never thought that it would come this quickly,” Aquilla said. “I always thought about, ‘Alright, Paris is going to be the year you make it.’ But to be able to achieve it right now and be on the team is amazing, and it just sets my plan further in motion in what I want to achieve next in my career.”
