Jun 5, 2026 9 min read

Her soft-spoken and gentle nature belie her determination and grit.

It is how Suzanne Montecalvo Antonucci played and excelled as an athlete and it remains an expectation in the classroom and on sports fields, courts and tracks for her three children.

“It was an honor to be Suzanne’s teammate,” said Anna Beck, who was her teammate at Washington High School. “She is a skilled athlete who is talented across multiple sports. In addition to having great talent, she was always dedicated, hard-working and a top contender. She is an overall great person, who always cheered on others. It was an honor being her teammate, working together and being supporters of one another so that we could push each other to a higher level of success.”

Antonucci concluded her scholastic career in 2002 by winning the 200-meter dash WPIAL Championships. That same season, she was the WPIAL runner-up in the 100 and the long jump.

She finished eighth in the 100 at the PIAA Championships and set a school record in the long jump with a mark of 17-7. During the 2001 season – her junior year – at the WPIAL Championships, Antonucci was second in the 200 as well as part of the Little Prexies’ WPIAL runner-up 1,600-meter relay team. She finished fifth in the 200 at the 2001 PIAA Championships. Also in 2001, at the WPIAL Championships, she was fourth in the triple jump and fifth in the 100. As a sophomore, Antonucci placed fourth in both the 100- and 200-meter events in the WPIAL.

In 1999, she was part of Washington’s WPIAL runner-up 1,600-meter relay team. Montecalvo Antonucci was twice (2000-2001) named the Overall Track and Field MVP at the Washington-Greene County Coaches Association Meet.

The versatile student-athlete was also a starter on Washington’s WPIAL Class AA runner-up basketball team, and she also competed in golf and cross country.

In 2003, at Robert Morris University, she was the Northeast Conference outdoor runner-up (18-3) in the long jump and was fourth in the 2006 NEC outdoor meet in the triple jump (37-6.75). Overall, she placed in the top eight in sprint and jump events 15 times in NEC meets for the Colonials from 2003-2006.

Added D.J. Vallee, a classmate: “Suzanne had her accolades at Robert Morris as well. It was natural talent. I think what made her elite was her work ethic just put her over the top.”

She will be inducted into the Washington-Greene County Sports Hall of Fame on Sunday.

“I think when I would run the bases in softball (as a youth player) is when we kind of figured out I was fast,” Antonucci said. “I never really did anything with track until I was in seventh grade. I think I started going to meets in the summer after seventh. My dad took me to an open track meet at Peters Township. That was the first time I competed in anything in track. I did well there.

“From there, I started going to some of the practices after school with the high school kids. So, from the summer of eighth grade on, I would go to the USA track and field meets throughout the summer and had some success there. After that, there wasn’t much of a choice.”

Timing is everything

Antonucci had a medical issue with her heart and that, ultimately, did not allow her to train in the same manner Little Prexies sprinters trained under her father, Guy Montecalvo, who was a highly successful track and field coach for Washington.

“From the time she was a little girl, just running around and playing and having some little races with her brother, I could see with her turnover and her gait, her technique that she had a chance,” Guy Montecalvo said.

“We could not train her like we trained our other sprinters. We just couldn’t do it because of the electrophysiology problem with the heart. We went through a whole cardiology workup with a number of doctors and ended up with catheterizations and attempted ablations that couldn’t be done because when they got in there and did electrophysiological mapping, they found out that she had two cables that went from the SA node to the AV node. And they came up during the surgery and told us that if we cut the wrong one, she would have to have a pacemaker implanted for the rest of her life. We (he and his wife, Marie) decided it wasn’t worth that.

“I would have liked to see what she could have done if she could have gone through the rigorous training that we put our sprinters through,” he continued, “but she just couldn’t do it. She did as well as she could with the capabilities she had.”

Antonucci’s career was also intertwined with U.S. Olympian Lauryn Williams of Rochester, who became only the third female in PIAA history to win the 100- and 200-meter dashes three different years. She set state and WPIAL records, went on to become an NCAA sprint champion and ran in the Olympics twice. In the 2004 Games, she was a silver medalist in the 100-meter dash. She won a silver medal in the two-woman bobsled at the 2014 Winter Olympics and is one of six athletes to win a medal in both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games.

“Knowing that no matter what I did, I wasn’t going to beat her was difficult,” Montecalvo Antonucci said. “To win the (WPIAL) gold medal (in the 200 dash in 2002) was redemptive for sure. I knew how hard I had worked.

“The first couple times I raced against (Williams) was a shock. I couldn’t believe there was a human being who was that fast. After that it was just accepting she was untouchable. I kind of just boxed her out and went into a meet focusing on myself and my race and knowing she’s going to be out there. I had to beat everybody else.”

Competitive, kind spirit

Kristen Edgar met Antonucci at a summer track meet. It was a life-changing moment.

“I think we were in eighth grade, and we ended up running against each other and being surprised at how fast the other one was. Then we started talking and we became friends.

“As a person, she’s very humble and kind, but as far as athlete, she had a killer instinct – very competitive and you couldn’t out-train her. I’d hang out at their house, and she’d be doing pushups and stuff. They’d be watching TV and then suddenly, they’d have to do like 50 pushups. She was extremely competitive and fiery. She just worked. I mean hard.”

Another friend, Steph Allison said, “I’ve known Suz since third grade. She’s just a fantastic person, just a bright light. She is such a hard worker and a wonderful person. I’m so glad that she’s been a part of my life.”

Perhaps the person with the best perspective on Antonucci is her former coach at Robert Morris, Michael Smith.

“She did everything technically very well,” Smith said. “We did simple things like pushup tests occasionally and things like that. She did pushups better than most military people do. She had her elbows tucked in beside her body, hands close and just repping them out. That’s obviously something that she acquired her entire lifetime.

“Obviously, she was a great student who had a great work ethic. They don’t always go hand in hand. I’ve coached a lot of kids who had so much talent and were lazy. Not her. She had injuries to overcome and she did it. And when I talk to her friends and teammates, they all talk about how understated she is, so poised, a soft talker, but ultra-competitive. You could see the passion and the will to win.”

Strong willed

Antonucci and her husband Joel reside in Venetia with their three children Julian, Rory and Lainey.

She and her family have a tight bond, and no one knows her better than her mom and younger sister, Laura. Her older brother Jim is deceased.

The family recognizes the Montecalvos’ oldest daughter for her strength and kindness.

“She never gave in to her doubts,” Marie Montecalvo said. “She always tried to put her very best out, whether it be on the track, jumping on the basketball court or playing softball when she was young.”

Her daughter also helped opponents.

“There was another girl competing and she was having a little trouble getting on the board or doing something a little off or not properly in her triple jump. After Suzanne was done, she coached her. It was the example for me of how she looked at what her role was as a competitor and as a human being. She has compassion. I think that goes back to her faith, and that grounded her a lot, and it has ever since. With her children, she has a mantra: ‘you don’t have to be the best. You just must give your best.’ She expects that of them, and she won’t let them off the hook. She doesn’t expect them to be the most skilled or the most achieved, but they must always put out their best effort. That’s all she asks of them.”

Added Laura Montecalvo, “Suzanne became powerful in college. She was extremely strong and very impressive. I know she probably doesn’t think this, but she’s a significant role model for me.

“She has a lot of poise. She’s a lot like my mom. Behind the scenes, I know that she was stressed out at times, but she never showed it. She’s a fierce competitor. She has a competitive fire that matches mine. She just shows it in a different way.”

John Sacco writes a column for the Observer-Reporter about local sports history.