Whitworth multisport stars Madison Carr, Amblessed Okemgbo push each other to record lengths ahead of NWC championship

Nearly 90 members of Whitworth University’s teeming track squad have qualified for this weekend’s Northwest Conference championships. So you wouldn’t think Coach Toby Schwarz would need to go scavenging spares from the Pirates’ other teams.

And, in truth, he didn’t.

But there’s nothing wrong with sharing.

Athletic cross-pollination happens every spring at Whitworth. A half-dozen school records belong to multisport athletes, including the oldest on the books – Bruce Reid’s 65-year-old long jump standard. There have been moonlighters (or converts) from football, basketball, soccer, volleyball and even the swim team; Schwartz’s pole vaulter this year scored 29 points in the backstroke and butterfly at the conference meet.

But rarely has such versatility been put to better use than it has by Madison Carr and Amblessed Okemgbo.

Or is it a case of short attention spans?

“Doing two sports keeps me from burning out or overthinking one or just being bored,” said Carr. “Then I miss what I haven’t been doing and get to come back to it.”

Just as important, they’ve occasionally been able to find the same competitive stimulus opponents provide in their other sports – this time, in each other.

“She inspires me, for sure,” said Okemgbo. “As much as I want her to do well and she wants the same for me, I want to win – and not by just a centimeter.”

The two seniors are a big reason the Whitworth women could score anywhere from 80 to 100 points in just the four throwing events at the NWC meet, which starts Friday at Boppell Track. Okemgbo is the defending champion in the shot put and discus, Carr in the hammer throw. Joined by junior teammate Kylie Loveless, they took three of the top five places in the shot at the NCAA Division III Indoor Championships barely a month ago.

Carr and Okemgbo have also played hot potato with the school shot record for the last two years, in almost comical fashion.

Fresh off a fifth-place finish in the 2025 NCAA indoor, Okemgbo tied Renee Tiumalu’s outdoor record of 45 feet, 21/2 inches at Whitworth’s annual Peace Meet. Two weeks later, Carr took that down, reaching 45-111/4.

“And the very next week Amblessed broke it again,” Carr said.

Which was OK, because on the last day of January this year, Carr ripped a 47-3 put in the Podium that stands – for now – as the longest in Whitworth history.

This friendly brinksmanship seems an odd development, considering the first thought when Okemgbo came to campus was to turn her into a heptathlete, and that Carr spent close to a year resisting her coaches’ suggestions that she was an elite -level thrower. It’s also a bit late developing, as Carr spent two years at Spokane Colleges before transferring across town in the fall of 2024.

Before that, she was an all-star in everything at West Valley High School – scoring the go-ahead goal in the Eagles’ East Region title game, coming up a point short of reaching the state trophy round in basketball and placing in the shot and discus at state track.

She gave up all but soccer for a bit at the Falls – her teams winning 29 of 40 games and finishing first and second in the NWAC. But she found her way back to the track as a sophomore and found enough success that doubling up again at Whitworth was appealing, and possibly inevitable.

Not that there weren’t hiccups.

“It was a hard transition at first – a new place, school, learning stuff,” she said. “My coaches are saying, ‘You can get to nationals’ and I’m really not seeing it. I came in throwing 12 meters (roughly 40 feet) and Kolton Carlson, my coach, is saying, ‘You’re a 14-meter thrower.’ ”

And then she popped that first school-record throw.

“OK, maybe they were right,” she said. “I finally told them that a year later.”

Okemgbo seems less reluctant to acknowledge her potential, perhaps as a nod to her name – given to her by parents Christian and Marcelina when their visa to the United States was granted on the day of her birth in Nigeria. After some years in the Tri-Cities, the family settled in Medical Lake – but Okemgbo herself blossomed at Whitworth.

She’s started for three years in volleyball, going to nationals with the Pirates in 2024 and earning All-NWC first-team honors this past season. She’s added 30 feet to her discus best, been a five-time All-American in track and twice an NCAA runner-up – in the discus last year, and the shot indoors last month.

It’s her time of year.

“Even competing against Division I people and beating them, nothing is sweeter than doing well at nationals,” she said.

“It’s the meet that shows who wants it and who’s willing to go all-in and put everything they have out there. Who’s the true athlete? Who can throw your biggest mark again? I’ve seen people lock up and even choke there, but it’s the atmosphere that makes the most sense to me. It’s what you train for.”

And juggling two sports? Neither regard it as a big deal – possibly because Schwarz essentially tells them adios until their fall sports are concluded (“Don’t even open my emails,” he insisted).

Now they’re just single-sport athletes, of course, with but a month left in their college careers. There are more records to chase. Okemgbo is still 13 inches shy of Kayla Brase’s 157-11 discus mark, and Carr – in just her third year of hammer throwing – has thrown 175-7 and is about 4 feet shy of the school standard.

There is business to take care of this weekend, especially if the Pirates want to dethrone George Fox for the first time since 2016. And there is one more trip to nationals – which Okemgbo pointed out is a whole different experience as a group effort.

“The first time I went to indoor nationals, it was me, my coach and my mom – I had success, but it wasn’t as much fun,” she said. “But when those two ladies were with me this last time – the mentality they bring, it just fuels me. It makes you a better thrower.”

To be certain, it’s always good to share.