Bishop Stang shot putter Jacob Cookinham is only a junior, but he is already smashing records with his incredible throws — the best of which has him ranked second in the nation with a distance of 66 feet, 1 inch.

Cookinham’s meteoric rise in shot put led Head Track Coach Steve McGonigle to call him a “once in a lifetime talent” and to compare his arm to light artillery.

“That shot flies out of his hand like a cannonball,” he said.

Cookinham — a Tiverton, Rhode Island resident — may have been born to throw shot put with a stocky build at 6 feet, 275 lbs. and a family track record in the sport, as both his parents and his grandfather were all shot putters.

“So I had a little bit of it in my blood already,” Cookinham said.

Nevertheless, he said the most important factor in his success is his drive to improve at the sport.

“It’s just the motivation of wanting to be — not number one — but the best athlete I can be,” he said.

An ancient sport that has been a part of the modern Olympics since its revival, shot put is a track and field event that involves throwing a heavy ball, known as a shot, as far as possible.

To put Cookinham’s distance of over 66 feet into perspective, Bishop Stang Athletic Director said that a “really good” high school throw is in the mid-to-high 40’s.

If you throw in the 50’s he said, “that’s certainly good enough to qualify for state competition.”

And, the young athlete has shown no signs of slowing down his already blistering pace of progress.

“Usually they hit a plateau,” McGonigle said. “You reach a point of diminishing returns where you can only throw so far.”

But Cookinham hasn’t had that problem, his coach said — in fact, he’s added multiple feet to his personal best just this month.

As a freshman, Cookinham had considered going out for basketball until Coach McGonigle saw him carrying the double bass he plays in the school orchestra and approached him to ask if he would like to try shot put, recognizing that he would have a good build for the sport.

“He was the biggest freshman there,” McGonigle said.

In his first season, Cookinham started strong, out-throwing all the Bishop Stang seniors at his first practice with the team.

“It just clicked,” he said.

From there Cookinham progressed quickly and was already throwing it consistently over 45 feet by the time Covid broke out in the spring of his freshman year.

“He had to train himself during quarantine,” said McGonigle, explaining how Cookinham’s dad would help him measure his throws. “But he went from 48 feet to 56 feet.”

Cookinham said that he used the extra time he had during lockdown to teach himself the rotational, or spin, method of throwing.

A more challenging technique, spinning involves an extra rotation as the thrower winds up and can greatly improve distances when performed correctly.

“The day we went into quarantine I started teaching myself to spin,” he said. “It took almost five months to have a good understanding of it, but it becomes muscle memory at a certain point.”

McGonigle said he was so surprised by how quickly Cookinham’s scores were rising that he teased him, saying he must be using a lighter shot or measuring wrong.

But there was no mistake.

Cookinham finished his freshman season as the number one freshman shot putter in the country, qualifying for the MIAA All-State Tournament where he finished 14th.

In his sophomore year, Cookinham said he developed a more standardized workout routine and set himself the goal of qualifying for the Junior Olympics the following summer.

“I went out sophomore year on a warpath to get there,” he said.

That year, Cookinham won the Division IV state finals and was the youngest shot putter in the country to qualify for Nationals in Eugene, Oregon, where he placed 6th. He also qualified for Junior Olympics that summer.

Cookinham competed in the 15-to-16-year-old division at the Junior Olympics in Jacksonville in July 2021, where he won gold just a few months after starting training with a private throwing coach.

“It was a great moment — I get emotional just talking about it,” he said. “It was such a great opportunity and experience.”

These days, McGonigle said, Cookinham uses the wrong sized shot on purpose when he practices — except it’s heavier, not lighter.

The coach noted that the Bishop Stang phenom practices with a 15-lb. college-weight shot so when he throws the 12-lb. high school version “it hardly feels like anything.”

With Cookinham now second in the country and less than two feet from breaking the all time Massachusetts state record, it’s hard to argue with results.

Ironically, McGonigle said, the current first place throw belongs to a student athlete who also lives in Rhode Island, meaning the nation’s two best shot putters both live in the smallest state.

The two have even competed directly against each other, according to McGonigle, who likened the competition to a showdown at the O.K. Corral.

But Cookinham’s coach said he is anything but a rough customer. In fact he described the young athlete as a “tremendous person” on and off the field.

“He’s an incredible kid,” he said. “He’s an A-student, he’s an altar server, he’s a musician — he plays the double bass… You’ll never have a nicer kid.”

Cookinham has had his fair share of adversity to overcome, as he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes exactly ten years ago at the age of seven, but he has emerged from it stronger than ever.

“It’s just another wave of things I’ve had to deal with, but in the long run I think it’s helped me mature and focus as I’ve gotten older,” he said.

McGonigle said that Cookinham’s impressive resume personally, academically, and athletically have already earned him the attention of recruiters at the university level.

“Needless to say, he’s being recruited by some of the top throwing schools in the country,” he said, adding that Cookinham would be looking for a school that will give him the right mix of athletics and academics. “It has to be the right match. It has to be a good education.”

But all of that is still over a year away, and, for now, Cookinham is keeping his focus on this season’s remaining meets where he will look to further improve his scores as he has in his last three consecutive meets.

“Three meets in a matter of 5 days, I have [set a personal record] in every one,” he said in a Jan. 24 Instagram post where he announced his current record 66 foot 1 inch throw.

Cookinham will compete at the Division IV championships at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston on Feb. 17 and then the All-State Championships on Feb. 26, according to McGonigle, who said there were a couple other meets they were going to consider attending to give Cookinham another shot.