It was the beginning of his sophomore year at Nottingham High, and Boaz Madeus was playing defensive end in a Northstars’ intrasquad football scrimmage. The offense got into its Herd Formation with all its biggest linemen and fullback lined up front, and the ball was snapped.
Madeus peeled off and got rocked by a blocker in the right side of his head. He never fell down but was stumbling around in a daze.
“That was the hardest hit I ever took in my seven years,” Madeus said.
It was quickly diagnosed as a concussion, something Boaz had dealt with numerous times as a child. This one meant the end of football forever.
“My mom came and picked me up from the school, and I was crying in the car because I thought that was my ticket,” Madeus said. “I was in love with football and thought that was gonna take me to college. I can’t put it into words how distraught I was when football ended. I was like, ‘Why God, why me? Why would you put me through this? You know I worked so hard to do this.’ Little did I know God had such a bigger plan than football for me.”
Indeed, what appeared to be the worst day of young Madeus’s life, became one of the best. Not that having his brains temporarily scrambled is what one might consider a good day, but the big picture said otherwise. With football off the table, he would focus solely on track.
The result is, Madeus now has a track scholarship to Rutgers University, a silver medal in the NJSIAA Meet of Champions and the third fastest 400 intermediate hurdle time in the nation. Madeus was truly humbled by the whole thing.
“Sometimes it moves you to tears when you think about how we’re so small, we don’t really realize what’s going on,” he said. “Things happen to us for a reason, and we don’t really have an answer to it, but somehow, some way it always comes to light. I’m blessed that it came through another venue like track. I find it a blessing because it opened the gates to something completely new, and my life has changed because of track; with the people I’ve met, the things I’ve achieved. The things I’ve had to go through really changed the person I became.”
For the better, of course.
Madeus is widely considered one of the nicest kids in Mercer County athletic circles, but he wasn’t always that way.
“I used to get really, really angry,” he said with a sheepish grin. “I had a bit of an anger problem when I was a kid. I snapped a little quick.”
He recalled one incident in a backyard football game with future Nottingham teammates Ramsden Madeus (his brother), Luke Westerberg and Tevin Williams. That crew had goaded him into switching from soccer to football. He signed up with Pop Warner, but this particular game was being played with no officials or coaches in sight.
“Luke tackled me, and he tackled me hard and slammed me on the ground,” Madeus said. “I was so furious. I don’t even think it was during the game, but he was just standing there, and I ran up to him and tackled him. He was clearly looking the other way, but to me it was like I just laid out the biggest Ray Lewis highlight ever.”
Rather than get upset, Westerberg and the rest of the guys were thrilled that Madeus was “starting to get that rush for football.”
Unfortunately—or fortunately, in this case—the rush was slowed to a stop after the final concussion. After letting it all out in the car with his mom, Madeus decided to become the best track competitor possible.
First, he had to calm himself down, which he did through his faith.
“I still have a tweak here and there, but I’m definitely a lot calmer,” Madeus said. “God’s in control of everything. There’s stretches here and there but you know at the end of the day who’s in control of it all, so you don’t let little stuff get to you more. That’s cooled down a lot.”
And his career heated up. After running a ghastly 84 seconds his first attempt at the 400 hurdles in spring of his freshman year, Madeus went to work. As a sophomore, he finished second in Central Jersey Group III, fifth in Group III states and 10th in the Meet of Champions.
In the winter of his junior year Madeus won CJ III in the 400 meters, took second in states and third in Meet of Champs. He did not advance in the hurdles but that was still becoming his event.
Last spring, he took second in sectionals, fifth in states and fifth in the Meet of Champions in the 400 intermediates. That effort was more impressive than it may appear as Madeus suffered a pulled hamstring in early April that held him out for six weeks. He basically placed in the MOC with hardly any training.
“My heart sank for him last year,” Nottingham sprints coach Jon Adams said. “Everything he had to go through with the injury, I really felt bad for him.”
He still was not 100 percent as he began a second summer with Al Jennings’ Track Club.
“After he pulled that muscle last year, by the time he got ready for the states he was just getting back into shape,” Jennings said. “It took him the rest of the summer to get him down to the time he should have had. He ran 52 in the nationals down in Florida.”
“I really didn’t find my groove until the summer,” Madeus said. “A lot of trial and error, seeing what worked for me because my stride length wasn’t the same. I wasn’t as explosive, I wasn’t as clean over the hurdles. It was definitely a build-up back into my top form.”
So what happens? The hamstring “came back to bite him a little bit” again this past winter, according to Adams. He finished fourth in the 400 in the Meet of Champions but did not qualify in the 55 hurdles.
“We were real cautious with how we handled things throughout the course of the regular (spring) season,” Adams said after watching Madeus race at this year’s Meet of Champions. “We were smart with our approach. We didn’t really worry about our regular-season record. We kind of focused on this day for Bo and some other guys who’ve given so much to our program over the years.”
The strategy paid off, as Madeus took first in the Mercer County Championships, CJ III and Group III states. With the third fastest time in the nation at 52.7 one would think he was the favorite. However, the top time belongs to East Orange’s Cory Poole, who ran a 50.7 to win his second straight MOC. Madeus was second and broke his own school record with a 52.25. He followed that up with a 7th place finish at New Balance Nationals with a time of 52.87.
Although he did not win at the Meet of Champions, Madeus looked upon his silver medal as an awesome experience, thanks to some advice from his mom.
“She tries to make me not get caught up in winning,” Boaz said right after the race. “Of course I wanted to come out and win it, that’s my mentality going into everything. If you want to be a champion that’s gotta be your mentality.”
That was followed by a big “but.”
“So many people sit and watch and wish they could be in my shoes,” Madeus said. “They wish they could be in that (final heat), wish they could be competing in this meet. So before I look at what has to happen for me to win, I have to look at how blessed I am to even be in this position, to be that close to somebody doing what Cory is doing and to even be in the conversation of top five in the nation.
“These are all things, before you look at the negative side of it, you gotta realize I’m blessed. The fact I’m even here right now, the fact that a school is paying me to run, essentially, is just a blessing I can’t even put into words.”
Madeus was dubbed “Superman II” by Adams (former Star Robert Wiggs is Superman I) because in one dual meet he won the 400 hurdles, 400 open and anchored the winning 4×400 relay.
While he didn’t do the open at the MOC, he did anchor the sixth-place relay team of David Viah, Godfred Akuffo and Kenley Souffrant. They ran a 3:19.98, just .04 off the school record, and Madeus was every bit as proud of that as he was his silver medal.
“The adversity we’ve overcome from Kenley being injured to Dave having to sit 30 days (after transferring) to last year when Godfred was having shoulder dislocations and I was having hamstring injuries,” Madeus said. “We’ve been looking at that record since we were little, tiny scrawny freshmen walking through the door. It just proves the resiliency of our squad. We didn’t let the adversity overcome us. We stayed strong together. Nobody has more heart. I can’t trust anybody to have my back more than those guys.”
Madeus was hoping to have a good showing at the New Balance Nationals in North Carolina before preparing for his career at Rutgers. On his official visit, former Star Jermaine Griffith served as his host.
“He was completely honest about the whole program, completely transparent, so I knew the good and the bad,” Madeus said. “When I weighed it out there wasn’t a better fit. Just knowing at the end of the day the goal for Rutgers is to be a Big 10 contender and a national contender, I felt that. My recruiting class can definitely be the start of that.
“This is a program you can sense a spark in. It’s hurt me personally, being a fan of Rutgers when I was a kid, to see Rutgers not excelling on the national stage in different sports. But to see the common goal of (the track team) rising to the top, it was something I wanted to be a part of. People are watching now and we’re ready to put Rutgers track on the map.”
Adams and Jennings are ready to watch it happen.
“He’s an unbelievable kid with an unbelievable work ethic,” Jennings said. “He has it all man. I think he’s going to really flourish in college.”
“Wherever he goes, I’ll keep my eye on him because he’s a heck of a kid,” Adams said. “You can’t find a nicer person, a more giving young man. He’s very devout in his beliefs and his religion and he comes from a tremendous family. He’s the second Madeus I’ve coached and I can say nothing but positive things about both boys and the family. What wonderful people and what a fine son they’ve raised.”
A son who took what could have been a devastating concussion, and turned it into something special.
Nottingham senior Boaz Madeus finished second in the state in the 400 intermediate hurdles. His time is the third fastest in the nation. (Photo by Wes Kirkpatrick.),
