Rachel Schmitt is off to Penn Relays

Nearly a decade ago, three young girls came to practice at the Fair Lawn junior track and field program and picked up a javelin for the first time.They threw it, liked it and threw it again. And really liked it. So they kept throwing it.Thursday morning, those three young girls, Fair Lawn seniors Hayley Romero and Melissa Viellette and junior Rachel Schmitt will make their latest mark when they become the first girls trio in Penn Relays history to qualify and throw the javelin at the country's oldest and biggest track and field meet.The three girls are among 21 North Jersey boys and girls to qualify for the 18 individual events at Penn. Five other North Jersey relay teams were invited to the 4-x-800 and distance medley relay invitational events. And more 30 than teams will be part of the 750 or so high schools from many states and several countries to compete at the 126th running of the event, which was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's not the first time these three girls have made history. On April 20, the Cutter trio broke their own Bergen County record by combining for a distance of 377 feet eight inches to win their second consecutive Bergen County Jack Yockers Relays three girls javelin title.Only two teams in Bergen County and North Jersey history had ever broken 350 feet in the event before Romero, Viellette and Schmitt went 366-7 a year ago: the 2017 Demarest team that combined for 351-10 and the 2000 Garfield team that threw 350-6. The most recent effort is believed to be a state record for three girls at a relay event."They're a fun group of girls and they work hard every day in practice,'' Fair Lawn throws coach Gina Pettigano Oswald said. "I don't like to let them throw javelin every day but they're always working on their steps when they're not actually throwing. And they help me a lot with the younger kids and they're wonderful helping them when they can.''How it startedThe usual recruitment tools for youth sports are similar: an announcement at school, parental involvement or wanting to tag along with a friend. Each of the Fair Lawn girls was introduced by one of those methods.  Romero brought home a flyer from school, Viellette had a dad who wanted her and her twin sister Megan to try the sport he had been successful at (George had qualified for the state cross-country championship while at Bayonne in the early 1980s) and Schmitt had a friend (who's still on the team) who was part of the program.So they joined.All three were athletically inclined, but none of them really wanted to run (although Megan Viellette eventually became a staple of the Fair Lawn distance team).All had done volleyball and basketball from the beginning while dabbling in soccer and softball.