A world-class throwing facility has a home in Rootstown

Tucked into the rural countryside of Rootstown is the home of Rodhe Sport, a shot put-, hammer- and discus-throwing facility, where Olympian and inventor Justin Rodhe coaches world-class throwing athletes and handcrafts training gloves used by professional athletes around the world.  

Rodhe had been training athletes at clinics around the Portage County area since 2005, adding coaching services in later years. When COVID hit, he realized he needed an official space.

“During COVID, we rented out a warehouse space in Ravenna,” Rodhe said. “We had people showing up from three states away to come train with us, because we were the only place open. We were getting more and more athletes and as the number of athletes increased, we needed a more central, stable space for them to all come to, so we started looking for property that had a building big enough to house athletes.”

The training center, which opened in 2021, is equipped with an elaborate outdoor throwing pad, an indoor throwing location and a spacious training and weight-lifting area. Rodhe also has an area set up with a sewing machine to create wrist straps and throwing gloves. The center offers focus sessions, open fitness classes, a throws club, competitions, satellite training and more.

Rodhe began throwing the shot put on the track and field team at Kenston Middle School in Chagrin Falls. He went on to become a state qualifier his senior year. After high school, he went to what was then known as Mount Union College, where he earned five All-American titles in shot put and even won a national championship in 2007. 

In 2008, Rodhe moved to Kamloops, British Columbia, to train with gold and bronze medalist Anatoliy Bondarchuk, a world-renowned throwing coach who trained and competed for the Soviet Union during the iron curtain years. 

Rodhe’s training under Bondarchuk led to his finishing second at the 2012 Olympic nationals, qualifying him for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. (He competed, but did not score because of fouls while throwing.) Also in 2012, he earned 10th in world ranking by Track and Field News. In 2013, he was IAAF 6th in World Ranking. He competed in the Commonwealth Games in 2014 and retired from the sport in 2015.

During his training with Bondarchuk, throwing wasn’t the only skill Rodhe learned. 

“When I got there he said, ‘OK, you have to make a glove for shot put, so I just went down to the shoe cobbler and got extra leather and laced it together,” Rodhe said. “Over the next year, I got a significant injury and this product that we were using allowed me to return from what would have been a career-ending injury. I decided that this is a very good thing. I should share it with the track world.”

Over the course of the seven years that Rodhe trained with Bondarchuk, he became a world-class athlete, and the style of his throwing glove progressed along with him. Rodhe officially began selling his prototype shot put training glove in 2010, eventually adding gloves for discus and hammer throwing, as well. 

The glove allows a throws athlete to train in a safer, more competitive way than previous products allowed.

“It doesn’t let the hand get pushed too far back and it doesn’t let the fingers get split apart,” Rodhe said. “A lot of injuries in shot put are, the shot put pushes through the fingers and it spreads the fingers too far and you get a lot of tendon and fascial damage in the hand, so it really protects people from the hyper flexion of the fingers, hyperextension of the fingers.” 

Rodhe’s glove paved the way for athletes to train with heavier shot put balls, which became commonplace in the sport thanks to Rodhe’s invention.

“With the advent of being able to use the glove, it brought in the ability for people to train with much heavier weights now than they did prior,” Rodhe said. “The men’s weight is 16 pounds;  it’s very common now for people to be training with 20-, 22-pound balls. Whether they use the glove, or not, it really cemented the training philosophy of throwing different weights, compared to the ’90s.” 

While training gloves are not permitted for use during shot put events, wrist straps are. For decades, shot put athletes had been training with soft, underwhelming wrist straps that gave little wrist support, until Rodhe modified the design to include a ratchet technology that gives more rigidity than wrist straps of the past and allows for more torque during a throw. 

Rodhe handcrafts several styles of shot put and hammer throwing gloves and throwing products and sells them through his online store.

One notable user of a Rodhe glove is the current men’s hammer throw medalist and world champion Ethan Katzberg. The 23-year-old athlete is trained by Dylan Armstrong, a friend and former training partner of Rodhe, who he competed with in the 2012 Olympics.

And Rodhe is also helping to train another one of the best throwers in the world. Two winters ago, Rootstown shot put thrower Abby Moore was home during winter break from the University of Oklahoma when she noticed that Rodhe, one of her Instagram followers, had a throwing facility in her hometown. The following summer, she decided to move back home to be coached by Rodhe.

Moore was a gifted volleyball player in middle school, but after her brother’s friends noticed her natural strength, they recommended she try track and field throwing events. She did join the high school track and field team and, with little knowledge of the sport, qualified for state shot put competitions all throughout high school, starting her freshman year. 

She started 2025 ranked the 45th best thrower in the world, but after competing in more than 14 meets, including winning her first silver-level medal in shot put at the Ed Murphey Classic in Memphis, Tennessee in July, she is now ranked the 20th. She plans to compete in the Olympic qualifiers in June of 2028 and, if she places in the top three, she’ll be eligible to compete in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.  

“I’m still learning, myself, being the young one on the scene and doing all this travel and learning how to throw well, and the chaos of these meets, traveling over to Europe and figuring out how to best prepare my body and throw a personal best. That’s half of it at this level,” Moore said. “I’m slowly figuring it out. I would not be here without Rodhe; he’s taught me a lot, a lot. He’s been great.”