Track stars, sisters Isabella and Juliette Whittaker charted unique paths from Mount de Sales to Olympics

When Isabella and Juliette Whittaker take the track for their respective Olympic debuts later this month, it might seem like they’ve done this kind of thing before. They sort of have.

Growing up, the sisters competed in egg relays and soccer games, representing different countries against their two older brothers. The Whittaker family Olympics featured a race that required downing a Pop-Tart halfway through. When Broadneck graduate Matt Centrowitz shocked the world with a gold medal win in the 1,500-meter race at the 2016 Rio Olympics, the Whittakers were vacationing on the Eastern Shore. They rushed outside to replicate the competition.

“It kind of brings it back full circle to this moment,” their father, Paul Whittaker, said. “It was a game but this is like the actual, real Games.”

The sisters from Laurel and graduates of Mount de Sales leave Wednesday for the Paris Games. Isabella, 22, is part of Team USA’s relay pool while Juliette, 20, will run in the 800 meters.

Isabella’s sixth-place finish in the 400 final (50.68) at the Olympic trials in Eugene, Oregon, was enough for her to be added to the relay pool. Six women will compete in four possible races: the preliminary and final rounds for the 4×400-meter relay and mixed relay. Isabella won’t know which event she’s competing in until meeting the team in Paris.

“I take it as a challenge,” said Isabella, a University of Pennsylvania alumna headed to Arkansas this fall for a graduate season. “I can be ready whenever they need me.”

Juliette’s ticket to Paris was secured at the trials after running a personal-best time in the 800 . When the two-time NCAA champion from Stanford saw the final scoreboard confirmed a third-place finish in 1 minute, 58.45 seconds, Juliette smacked her hand over her forehead in disbelief, gleaming with a toothy smile.

“I think it was like pure shock and joy,” she said. “Obviously, I wanted to get top-three but wanting it is very different than actually doing it.”

‘How it’s going’

Mount de Sales hosted a send-off party Wednesday night inside its Catonsville campus auditorium where a swarm of about 250 supporters gathered to celebrate the sisters.

They smiled for photos posing with nearly everyone in attendance — including rival Maryvale Prep’s current team, which Paul jokingly tried to block. Young girls idolizing the sisters asked for autographs on hats and shirts. Speeches and a video montage from Mount de Sales brass offered well wishes, complementing gifted flowers, posters and USA-themed cowgirl hats.

This was a clear sign of how far the Whittaker sisters had come since roaming the campus a few short years ago.

Isabella and Juliette grew up competing in all the same sports but charted unique paths to meet at the same point: rooming together in the Olympic Village.

Paul and their mother, Jill Pellicoro, both ran track at Georgetown. They didn’t push running onto any of their four children, fearful of burnout. So Isabella and Juliette tested every other sport until about sixth grade.

Swimming proved to be their first shared passion while running middle school cross country in the background. Paul thought his daughters were destined to swim in college. He thought they loved it. Dad was wrong.

“They had been swimming for seven years and I think they hated it,” Paul said. “Well no, they told me they hated swimming.”

Middle-distance running became their full-time passion at Mount de Sales. But the school doesn’t have a track — which adds a wrinkle of grandeur to their Olympic qualification.

Instead, the team would gather after school for pre-practice meetings, then seniors would drive the group 10 minutes up the road to share the track with their brother school, Mount Saint Joseph, where Paul coaches.

“I feel like it definitely shaped our culture quite a bit,” Juliette said. “Us not having a track, for some people that was maybe like, ‘I don’t want to do it anymore.’ It just makes it not as convenient. It was definitely annoying sometimes but it made us kind of want [success] a little more.”

After high school, Isabella stayed relatively close to home, competing at Penn. Juliette, after being named 2021-22 Baltimore Sun high school girls Athlete of the Year , veered off to Stanford, across the country.

Isabella’s ascension wasn’t a straight shot. She wasn’t highly recruited out of high school. Some track folks were surprised she made NCAA nationals as a freshman then qualified for the Olympic trials. Injuries set her back, most prominently in 2022 when a stress fracture in her back kept her off the track for six months.

She returned to dominance with a banner 2024. Isabella broke five Ivy League championship meet records: the indoor and outdoor 400, the indoor and outdoor 4×400 relay and the outdoor 4×100. Her indoor 400 time of 51.69 in late January was then the second-fastest women’s time in the world in the event.

“In my mind, at least, I thought this was something that definitely could happen,” Isabella said. “But I thought it would happen a little further down the line. So it’s kind of crazy that it happened this early in our careers.”

Both sisters competed in the 2021 trials for the last Olympic cycle, postponed a year because of the coronavirus pandemic. There were perhaps more widely known expectations for Juliette.

Then 17 years old, she finished 10th in the 800, narrowly missing the cut for the final heat. It’s customary for the top three placers to enjoy a victory lap with the American flag draped over their shoulders. About a quarter of the way around the track, superstars of the sport Athing Mu, Raevyn Rogers and Ajeé Wilson stopped. That’s where Mount de Sales coach Steve Weber was sitting with the Whittaker family.

“Those three who had just made the [Olympic] team came over to Juliette,” Weber recalled. “They said, ‘See you in three.’”

Juliette was admittedly a bit star-struck. She went home and penned the memory as a keepsake. A motivator. She recently dug up the paper and read it again. “That got me very excited for this Olympics,” she said.

Their mom designed T-shirts for the family to wear at the Olympic trials. On the front is a picture of Isabella and Juliette, maybe 3 and 5 years old, holding hands and running up the street. “Whittasistas” is inscribed on top with “how it started” beneath the photo. “How it’s going” is on the back with an updated picture of each sister running for their respective schools.

The T-shirts will be making the trip to Paris. As will just about their entire extended family.

For a household that strictly showed the Olympics on television for two weeks every four years and that hosted their own version, it was only fitting to watch their daughters reach the real Games together.

“I almost passed out at the trials. Literally, I got up and was light-headed,” Paul said, later adding: “It’s just starting to set in.”