By Tyler Maheu, Staff Sportswriter
In the spring, then-Woodstock High School sophomore Pippa Shaw was warming up before a track meet as she had done countless times before. The pole vaulter, who had dreams of taking her skills to the collegiate level, hit the air on her second warmup jump. When she landed, her life changed in a snap.
Shaw, 17, has lived in Woodstock her whole life, playing every sport she could along the way. But track is the sport she saw a future in. “My main event was the pole vault, but I also ran the 100-meter and 400,” she said. “I wanted to pole vault in college.” According to her mother, Jenny Shaw, she even pursued this goal last winter with another school, Burr & Burton Academy, which helped her participate in winter track meets at Dartmouth College.
Last spring, she encountered several obstacles towards this dream. First, Woodstock’s lack of a pole vault pit and track. Second, the extra-rainy first few months of 2025. “It was a really rainy season,” she said. “I wasn’t able to pole vault because they don’t do vault at meets if it’s raining. And so, I hadn’t been able to vault yet, and it was early May, pretty late in the season.”
On her second warm-up jump, Pippa launched properly, but slipped off the pole. This caused her to land awkwardly. “I landed on my foot twisted, and it just kind of snapped,” she said. “I could hear it and see it because my ankle was dislocated, too. My foot was on backwards; it hurt really bad.”
Nearby, her mom watched on in fear. “It was the first significant injury in our family. It was more traumatic because I heard it snap, and I heard her scream,” Jenny recalled. “It was intense. I still struggle with the PTSD of it, the sound of her scream. You can’t compare the feeling until it’s your own.”
In the commotion, Jenny managed to call 911 and get an ambulance to Fair Haven Union Middle High School, where the event was taking place. “I’m not usually good in emergencies, but when it’s your child, you just leap in,” she said.
According to Pippa, she was transported by ambulance to Rutland to be seen before being taken to Dartmouth-Hitchcock in Lebanon, New Hampshire, for surgery. Once there, doctors reset the ankle.
At left: WUHS athlete Pippa Shaw. At right: An X-ray of Pippa Shaw’s ankle shows the severe break she sustained while warming up for a pole vault event last spring. Courtesy of Pippa Shaw
While the physical pain was seemingly over, the mental toll had just begun. “It was pretty hard,” said Pippa of her emotional state. “I feel like it didn’t register or process fully until a couple months later. In the moment, I was like ‘this really sucks and is not good.’” Besides the injury, she became worried because she was hoping to show off her skills for college recruiters: “It was my sophomore year, so it was supposed to be my season to stand out.”
Pippa, who loves to run, struggled with the sudden change to a sedentary lifestyle. “Not being able to move around or walk by myself for three months was pretty debilitating physically and mentally,” she said. “I lost all muscle mass. Being in a cast and on crutches for the summer sucked.” She continued,” I was excited to start doing more, not just exercise-wise but socially. It’s hard to go hang with your friends when on crutches, it’s tiring, it’s harder than walking, it’s straining.”
Despite this, Jenny says that the 17-year-old always conveyed positivity. “She was so positive, so upbeat,” she said. “Right away, my brain went to her needing to see a sports psychologist, but she said she was good.”
Towards the end of the summer, Pippa improved substantially, walking on the broken ankle without a boot, exercising, and preparing to start high-impact workouts. But then, setbacks hit. In August, she called her mother from a sleepover, reporting that her ankle just didn’t feel right and didn’t look good. An appointment was made for the following week to take a look at it. She would be rushed into surgery upon the doctors’ analysis.
There, the Shaws discovered that Pippa’s ankle had become infected, likely due to the hardware inside the leg. After a weekend stay in the hospital, she seemed to be back on the right track. Hospital staff implanted a PICC line in her arm to administer antibiotics, which Pippa would learn to self-administer.
Throughout the process, Pippa discovered a passion for the medical field. “She used the experience as a learning process for the med field,” said Jenny Shaw. “The silver lining was getting to see her learn and grow.”
“There were some pluses,” said Pippa. “I focused more on school, realized I liked science. Being in hospital so much made me realize that maybe being a doctor could be cool.”
After a few days of antibiotics, including the first day of school, Pippa became feverish. The PICC line that was implanted after the infection became infected itself. This return to the hospital marked her longest stay, a week and a half. “It was more of a mental setback than physical,” she said.
After rehabbing at Upper Valley Rehab Inc. in Woodstock, Pippa was ready to prepare for the winter sports season, where she shines as the girls hockey team’s goalie. “I didn’t start playing until my freshman year,” she said, recalling how she was drawn to the sport. “All my friends played it, and a couple were starting to play that year, so I decided to try it.” The decision to try hockey came after years of gymnastics and skiing as she tried to find her winter passion.
“I decided to try hockey, where I started as a skater for the first couple months of my freshman season,” she said. Then, an opening in the net gave her a new opportunity. With the team’s senior goalie graduating, Pippa made the decision to try the position. “I wasn’t bad at it, so I stuck with it,” she laughed.
Pippa spent the summer after freshman year attending hockey camp at Middlebury College, which she fondly remembers as a fun experience that taught her more about the sport and the position of goalie. “She’s a competitor,” said girls hockey head coach Ian Coates following a recent game. “She’s playing in a lot of pain and is still managing to put out a performance like she does.” He continued his praise. “She reacts very well, she moves, she’s really competitive. It’s the individual herself who creates a special kind of goalie.”
Jenny recalls that towards the end of Pippa’s recovery, doctors found a blood clot and became very worried upon learning that she played in net. “He was scared of her being goalie, but her main goal was to get cleared for hockey.”
“Quite a bit of it is innate; it’s just who she is,” said Jenny Shaw in reference to her daughter’s exemplary work ethic. “My husband and I grew up in self-employed families, both taught to get a job and earn your way. She’s seen us model hard work. She has always been very dedicated.” Jenny continued, “She’s always enjoyed having a challenge and dedicating herself to something.”
When not on the ice or out on the track, Pippa can be found working her part-time job at Woodstock’s Farmers’ Market or volunteering at the local humane society. “Tenacious,” said Jenny with regard to the one word that best describes the youngest of her two daughters. “She doesn’t give up, no matter the size of the mountain in front of her. I’m really proud of her.” According to Pippa, she has begun looking into colleges in Boston and hopes to pursue a pre-med degree after high school.
While not out of the woods yet, Pippa has reflected back on the past year and the lessons it has taught her about herself and life. “I think it’s been a lesson to me to not base everything of who you are on one area of your life,” she said. “I was putting my whole worth into sports. I was going to be a good athlete in college; that’s who I was, what I talked about. You have no idea, it can get taken away from you in a split second.” She continued, “It sucks, it’s hard to bounce back from, but it is what it is, and you have to keep going. It’s not a forever setback, even though it’s changed the trajectory of the next few years of my life.”
Pippa Shaw finished her story with a smile you could hear through the phone, noting, “It’s a cool story to tell when I want to.”
