Among the winners of the Post-Gazette Male Athlete of the Year in the previous 42 years have been a Pro Football Hall of Famer, five first-round NFL draft picks, an NBA player, two Major League Baseball players, an NCAA wrestling champions, an NCAA basketball champ and numerous others who are all-time greats in Western Pennsylvania high school sports.
But this year’s winner is unlike all of the others. In the lineage of the award, he’s the first to have a splashy image.
Josh Matheny, a senior at Upper St. Clair High School, is the winner of this year’s award, which takes into account all athletes in the WPIAL and City League in the 2020-21 school year. Matheny is a swimmer, and no male swimmer has ever won athlete of the year. That fact gives an indication of the talent pool in which Matheny swims.
And Matheny isn’t just a good swimmer. You could make a point for him being arguably the best swimmer in WPIAL history.
Matheny was without peers on the WPIAL and PIAA level for the past few years, but his reputation goes far beyond the state. Matheny’s talents put him on the world stage two years ago. If that’s not enough to convince anyone that he is deserving of the award, consider that he came close to making the U.S. Olympic team last month in the 100-meter breaststroke. High school swimmers generally don’t come close to the Olympics, competing against men who are sometimes in their late 20s.
No joshing. This kid is one of a kind. The WPIAL had some other terrific multi-sport athletes this school year that had notable achievements. Pine-Richland’s Cole Spencer (football and wrestling) and Fox Chapel’s Eli Yofan (golf, basketball and volleyball) were two of the most accomplished. Matheny is a one-trick pony, but his achievements on the national and even world level put him over the top for the award in the eyes of the Post-Gazette scholastic sports staff.
“I never really thought about this award before or a swimmer getting it,” Matheny said. “But I know I’m honored to be a swimmer and to win this award with so many outstanding athletes.
“I don’t know if I’d say I represent the sport of swimming. That’s a loaded phrase. But swimming doesn’t get a whole lot of the spotlight. So I’m glad to win this award and maybe spread the awareness of swimming. It’s an enjoyable sport and fun to watch. I’m glad maybe I can get it some exposure.”
His talents got him plenty of exposure during his career:
• Matheny won gold medals at the WPIAL level and he became the first swimmer in PIAA history to win the 100-yard breaststroke four consecutive years. He set a national high school record in the event as a sophomore and broke the record as a senior.
• He also won the PIAA individual medley title as a senior and was a member of two medley relay teams that won a state championship this year and in 2019.
• Before his junior year at Upper St. Clair, he won two gold medals and two silver medals at the World Junior Championships in Hungary and came within 0.01 second of the World Junior (18-and-under) record.
• In mid-June, Matheny opened eyes again when he qualified for the finals of the 100 breaststroke at the Olympic Trials. He finished fifth in the race, quite an achievement for an 18-year-old.
In a little more than a month, it’s on to Indiana University for Matheny, and you should hear Hoosiers coach Ray Looze talk about Matheny.
“I talk to USA Swimming officials all the time,” Looze said. “This is our next great breaststroker in a long line of breaststrokers. I think Josh, God willing he stays healthy, will be on the podium of the Olympics someday and go times never gone before. … He’s the real deal.”
Matheny graduated from Upper St. Clair with a sterling reputation — as a swimmer and student. He had almost a 4.0 grade-point average.
“If I had to be remembered for something in high school, I think I’d want to be remembered as someone who was very friendly, especially on the pool deck,” Matheny said. “I know a lot of good athletes are remembered negatively because they’re great on the field, but their personality is not great. I don’t want to be remembered like that.”
Those who know Matheny well will tell you he is a conservative teenager in some ways but a free-spirited one, also. He has two lizards as pets, loves to play pickle ball with his friends and loves watching college football. Want an example of his free spirit? On Thursday, he and a few high school buddies went skydiving for the first time.
“We all agreed that if I didn’t make it to Tokyo (for the Olympics), we would go skydiving,” Matheny said with a laugh. “It’s just one of those things that we wanted to do.”
Matheny is the youngest of Jeff and Kristin Matheny’s three children (they have two older daughters). The Mathenys are graduates of North Hills High School, where his dad, who is now an orthopedic surgeon, played hockey and his mom was a swimmer. Her maiden name was Kristin Stover and she finished fourth in the 100-yard breaststroke at the WPIAL championships one year. Ironically, that’s the same event where her son would set a national high school record more than three decades later.
“When Josh wants to do something, he’s very stubborn and very determined,” Kristin Matheny said. “We joke that Josh knows what he wants and he knows how to get there. At times, that could be challenging for a parent, but he has definitely focused that determination and stubbornness in the right direction.”
The funny thing about Josh Matheny is he really didn’t focus on swimming until his teenage years.
“I tried baseball, soccer, basketball, pretty much everything when I was younger,” Matheny said. “I eventually landed in lacrosse and hockey.”
And swimming. But Matheny tried it only at the encouragement of his mother because Josh’s two older sisters were swimmers.
“Josh was the third child, and swimming seemed to be something all three of them could do in the summer at the same time, which is great for a parent,” Kristin Matheny said with a chuckle. “He didn’t necessarily want to be on a swim team, but I said, ‘Your sisters are doing it, it’s fun, so go do it.’”
Josh Matheny ended up falling in love with the sport. He gave up hockey and lacrosse after eighth grade.
“He realized he could really go somewhere in swimming and really enjoyed it,” Kristin Matheny said.
Maybe Matheny’s future will include NCAA championships — and maybe the Olympics. He is motivated and driven but made it clear that this Olympic goal will not define him as a person.
“It’s obviously every swimmer’s goal to represent the U.S. at the Olympics and have a gold medal around their neck,” Josh Matheny said. “That’s what other people want for me, too. But it’s not everything I want to get out of life. Deep down, it’s just the relationships you build with people, the time you spend with friends … Those are the things that are important in the end. Those are the experiences I want to get out of all this, too.”
Mike White: mwhite@post-gazette.com and Twitter @mwhiteburgh
First Published: July 4, 2021, 11:00 a.m.
