German javelin ace repays Virginia Tech’s faith

BLACKSBURG — As Matthias Treff watched the javelin sail out of his right hand and through the Florida air, he got that excited feeling, the one that made him fall in love with this niche sport when he was a teenager back home in Germany.

He used to relish the satisfaction of seeing the javelin land farther and farther away every time he threw it. He came to learn that the success of a throw depended largely on the javelin’s flight — the straighter the better. And this one looked straight, all right.

Treff had waited a long time to feel this way again. He began his freshman year at Virginia Tech last fall, but javelin is not contested during the indoor track and field season. During the outdoor season, he didn’t compete and was limited in practice by an injury to his right elbow.

Now, he was waiting to see his throw hit the ground in his first college competition, the ACC championships on April 16 at Miami. When it did, and the official called out Treff’s distance, Tech throws coach Greg Jack screamed with joy. Treff had thrown 239 feet, 10 inches. The mark won the event by 17 feet and ranks as the second-best in school history behind Jacobus Smit’s 242-9 in 2005.

More impressive were the physical conditions under which Treff achieved the result. His elbow swelled so badly after the meet that he couldn’t straighten his arm for two days. An MRI revealed a torn ulnar collateral ligament that will require surgery after the season.

Despite not throwing in practice since the ACC meet, Treff will compete this morning in the NCAA East Regional in Greensboro, N.C. A top-five finish guarantees him a spot in the NCAA national meet June 10-13 in Fayetteville, Ark. Treff has the second-best mark in the region and sixth-best in the country.

He knows how much his elbow will hurt later today, but he said, “I don’t really feel it during the throw.“ During the throw, it’s just that javelin soaring across the sky, a promising sight Jack enjoys just as much as Treff. Jack, who coached 27 All-Americans in his previous seven seasons at Tech, thinks Treff will contend for a national championship during his career.

“He’ll definitely go down as our best javelin thrower,“ Jack said.

Just a handful of states, not including Virginia, contest javelin at high school meets. Safety concerns are understandable. (YouTube has almost as many javelin accident videos as highlight packages.) And, as Jack said, high schoolers with the strongest arms often end up being pitchers or quarterbacks.

So javelin remains something of a fringe curiosity in the United States, which hasn’t produced an Olympic medalist, male or female, since Kate Schmidt won bronze in 1976. “Here in the U.S., you kind of have to explain what the javelin is,“ Treff said.

In its simplest terms, it stands out in today’s modern sports landscape as a refreshingly primitive activity: a person sprinting down a runway — Treff uses a 20-meter approach — and hurling an 8-foot, 2.8-ounce spear as far as he can.

Treff, who is now 6-3 and 220 pounds, first threw the javelin when he was 14, two years after he began participating in track and field in his hometown, Burgthann, just outside Nuremberg. At first, he could throw about half as far as he can now. Then Maria Ritschel, who coaches women’s javelin for Germany’s national team, saw him at a meet.
“She was like, ‘He has talent,‘ “ Treff said.

Ritschel’s club team is based in Halle, about 185 miles from Treff’s home, and he moved there to attend high school and join the club. (Though Germany has had just two male Olympic medalists in javelin since 1960, the country has produced 10 on the women’s side.) Treff’s personal-best mark improved to 232-2, which he achieved about two years ago and didn’t break until the ACC meet.

After graduating high school, Treff served his mandatory year in the military at a base in Germany and continued to practice. He e-mailed several American college coaches and was impressed when Jack responded with his knowledge of javelin. It was one of several throwing events in which Jack participated while attending Florida State in the late 1990s.

Jack liked Treff’s potential so much that he gave him a full scholarship. This is “sort of rare,“ Jack said, for an athlete who competes in one event, especially the only event not held during indoor season. The NCAA limits men’s track to 12.6 scholarships, so they are at more of a premium than in the revenue-generating sports, football and men’s basketball, in which every significant player gets a full ride.
“Unless you’re winning an event or you’re an All-American, it’s really not worth investing that kind of money” for a one-event athlete, Jack said.

Jack tweaked Treff’s form in the fall, getting him to rotate his hips more while throwing. Jack hopes this will put less pressure on Treff’s elbow than his old throwing motion, which relied mainly on arm strength. Treff thinks his previous technique, which he said was sometimes “sloppy,“ might have started his current elbow problems.

But Jack knows Treff has plenty of time in the next three years to improve, heal and build on an auspicious debut.

“Overall,“ Jack said, “he’s doing a hell of a job for us.“

Contact Darryl Slater at (804) 649-6026 or .