From the Ohio Valley to the Hurdle Lane: The Rise of Madelyn Cisar
There is a particular kind of athletic story that takes root in the small cities tucked into the bends of the Ohio River, where sports culture runs deep and family legacies have a way of shaping what is possible. Madelyn Cisar is writing exactly that kind of story. A hurdler and sprinter competing for West Liberty University in the Mountain East Conference, the Glen Dale, West Virginia native has emerged as one of the more compelling young athletes in NCAA Division II track and field, rewriting school records in her first season of collegiate competition and showing no signs of slowing down as she moves into her junior year.
Roots and Background
Madelyn Cisar was born around 2004 and grew up in Glen Dale, a small Marshall County city on the West Virginia side of the Ohio River, directly across from Sardis, Ohio. It is a community with a genuine sense of sports tradition, and Cisar’s family is very much a part of that tradition. Her father, Mark Cisar, is one of the more decorated multi-sport figures in Ohio Valley history — a two-time West Virginia football Player of the Year in high school, an All-American baseball pitcher at Charleston Southern University, a Boston Red Sox draftee, and a longtime coach at both the high school and college levels. Mark served as pitching coach at West Liberty University before returning to the high school ranks as head baseball coach at John Marshall High School in Glen Dale, where Madelyn would go on to compete in track and field.
Growing up in a household defined by athletic drive and competitive experience, it would have been surprising if Madelyn had not gravitated toward sports. She attended John Marshall High School as a member of the Monarchs, competing in track and field through her prep career. As a senior in early 2023, she was also selected as a participant in the annual John Marshall Queen of Queens pageant — a tradition that speaks to the broader sense of community participation that shapes life in Marshall County. She graduated from John Marshall in the spring of 2023 and enrolled at nearby West Liberty University that fall.
Choosing West Liberty
West Liberty University sits atop a hill in the West Liberty community of Ohio County, West Virginia, just a short drive from Glen Dale and the Wheeling metro area. For Cisar, the choice to compete for the Hilltoppers was both a natural fit geographically and a logical athletic step. West Liberty competes in the Mountain East Conference at the NCAA Division II level — a competitive circuit for Division II athletics in the Mid-Atlantic and Appalachian region — and the school’s track and field program under head coach Jason Falvo has been developing into a legitimate contender within the conference.
Standing 5 feet 4 inches, Cisar is listed as a hurdles specialist, and her event focus has settled on the 400-meter hurdles — one of the most physically demanding events in track and field, requiring the speed of a sprinter, the stride pattern of a technician, and the endurance to sustain both through a full lap of the oval.
First Steps on the College Stage (2023–24)
Cisar’s TFRRS college career log opens in December 2023, when she competed in the 400 meters and as part of a 4×400 relay at the Youngstown State Indoor Track and Field Icebreaker — a preview of what a freshman season in the Mountain East Conference often looks like, with athletes spending their early months learning competition rhythms while building toward their primary events. Her 400-meter time of 1:07.47 from that early December meet indicated a raw base of fitness from which to build.
The 2023–24 season appears to have been primarily a developmental year, as her documented competition results are limited from that period. It is not uncommon for first-year collegiate athletes in the hurdles — an event that demands considerable technical refinement and athlete-specific stride calibration — to spend their freshman fall and early indoor campaign working on fundamentals before breaking out in the outdoor season. Whatever the Hilltoppers’ coaching staff had planned for her development, the results that would come in the spring of 2025 suggested it had gone exactly right.
A Record-Breaking Freshman Outdoor Season (Spring 2025)
When the 2025 outdoor season opened in late March, Madelyn Cisar wasted no time announcing herself as a legitimate force in the Mountain East Conference hurdles picture. She opened her 400-meter hurdles campaign on March 21–22 at the Marty Pushkin Invitational with a time of 1:15.42 — a solid first outdoor mark from which to build. The progression over the weeks that followed was striking in both pace and consistency.
By the West Liberty Tim Weaver Invitational at the end of March, she had improved to 1:11.99. Then came a 1:11.42 at the OWU Marv Frye Invitational in early April, followed by a 1:08.62 at the John Papa Invitational on April 17 — a time that placed her third overall in that field and signaled that something special was developing. Then, on May 3, 2025, she delivered the performance that captured the attention of the entire West Liberty athletic community.
Competing at the Stan Romanoski Open hosted by West Virginia University in Morgantown, Cisar ran a 1:07.82 in the 400-meter hurdles — a new West Liberty University school record, and notably, a mark that broke the school record she herself had set just two weeks earlier. The record fell on one of the most visible stages available to a Division II program: a major-program open hosted by a Big 12 institution, against a deep and competitive field. West Liberty’s athletic department noted the achievement prominently in its coverage of the meet.
She also competed at the Mountain East Conference Outdoor Track and Field Championships that spring, posting a 1:09.05 in the preliminary round of the 400-meter hurdles on her way to an 11th-place finish in the conference — a result that demonstrated consistent performance under championship meet conditions and provided valuable experience heading into subsequent seasons. She also contributed to West Liberty’s 4×400 relay team, which ran 4:13.84 at the conference meet.
In the field of the 400-meter hurdles, where a freshman rewriting her program’s all-time record list while posting times against some of the region’s most competitive fields is genuinely uncommon, Cisar’s spring 2025 campaign stood as a clear statement of potential.
The Indoor Season: Branching Out (Winter 2025–26)
With her outdoor school record firmly in the books, Cisar returned for the 2025–26 indoor season as a sophomore with additional goals on the table. Indoor track does not feature the 400-meter hurdles — the event is an outdoor-only discipline — so the winter season gave her the opportunity to develop her flat 400-meter speed, a critical building block for long-term success as a hurdler.
She opened the indoor season on January 18, 2026, at the Muskie Meet hosted by Muskingum University, posting an initial 400-meter time of 1:09.07. Over the course of the indoor season, she made meaningful strides in that event. At the Ashland Jud Logan Light Giver Open on February 6–7, 2026, she ran a personal-best 400 meters of 1:05.55 — a marked improvement that moved her firmly into competitive Division II territory for the flat quarter-mile. She followed it up with a 1:05.76 at the Youngstown State Last Chance Meet on February 13. Alongside those flat 400 appearances, she also contributed to West Liberty’s 4×400 relay team through the indoor campaign.
The indoor season also allowed Cisar to develop in the 60-meter dash and the 60-meter hurdles. In the 60-meter hurdles, she posted a 10.74 at the Ashland Jud Logan Light Giver Open in February 2025 — her best indoor hurdles mark to date — along with an 11.18 at the Ashland Invitational. These times reflect the sprint mechanics that underpin her hurdles profile, and continued development in the short indoor hurdles adds technical versatility to her overall event package.
Sophomore Outdoor Season (Spring 2026)
When the 2026 outdoor season opened, Cisar entered it as one of the more experienced 400-meter hurdlers in West Liberty’s program and with a school record to defend — and ultimately to break. Her early spring results showed the natural oscillation that comes with building fitness across a full outdoor season.
She opened on March 20–21 at the Marty Pushkin Invitational with a 1:09.77, then improved to 1:10.26 at the West Liberty Tim Weaver Invitational the following weekend. At the University of Charleston Golden Eagle Invitational on April 3, she ran 1:10.47. Then, within a span of two days in mid-April, she logged two of her best outdoor 2026 marks: a 1:08.91 at the John Papa Invitational on April 16 and a 1:08.18 at the Mountaineer Showcase hosted by West Virginia University on April 17–18 — good enough for third place at the latter meet. The 1:08.18, while not yet surpassing her 2025 school record, placed her well within range of doing so as the season progresses toward the Mountain East Conference Championships.
West Liberty’s athletics department noted the Mountaineer Showcase performance specifically in its meet recap, listing Cisar among the Hilltoppers’ top-three finishers in a meet held against a competitive multi-division field at a Power conference venue.
The Student-Athlete
What sets Cisar apart beyond the times on the results sheet is the combination of athletic development and academic commitment she has brought to West Liberty. In the summer of 2025, she was named to the Mountain East Conference Academic Honor Roll for the Spring 2025 semester — recognition reserved for student-athletes who meet a minimum GPA threshold while competing at the conference level. This came the same semester in which she set the West Liberty school record in the 400-meter hurdles, a combination that speaks well of her priorities and her ability to manage the demands of college athletics alongside academic work.
Cisar is one of several student-athletes on the West Liberty women’s track and field team to earn that academic distinction, which suggests a team culture that values classroom performance alongside competitive results — a culture in which she appears to thrive.
Looking Ahead
As of the spring 2026 outdoor season, Madelyn Cisar is a junior at West Liberty University with at minimum two more semesters of NCAA eligibility remaining after the 2025–26 season concludes, depending on eligibility configurations. The trajectory of her career to date — a school record in her first outdoor season, continued improvement in flat speed, and consistent performance in her primary event — suggests she is well-positioned to continue advancing within the Mountain East Conference landscape.
The 400-meter hurdles is an event in which top NCAA Division II women typically operate in the 57–62 second range at the national level, and athletes who enter college with a foundational time of 1:07 and drop to sub-1:08 through steady development routinely find themselves approaching nationally competitive marks with another year or two of dedicated training. For Cisar, the window between where she is today and where the elite end of Division II competition lives is a realistic training target rather than a distant aspiration.
Her roots in a coaching family, her willingness to compete at high-level venues, and her consistent progression suggest an athlete who understands that long-term results are built through the accumulation of small improvements, season after season. West Liberty and the Ohio Valley will be watching closely to see how the next chapters unfold for one of its own.
Personal & Miscellaneous
Madelyn Cisar is a Glen Dale, West Virginia native who grew up in a household defined by athletics and coaching. Her father, Mark Cisar, is the head baseball coach at John Marshall High School and a celebrated figure in Ohio Valley sports history. She is a member of the West Liberty University women’s track and field team, competes in the hurdles and related sprint events, and stands 5 feet 4 inches. No verified personal social media profiles or sponsor affiliations have been confirmed in available public records at the time of this writing.
Career Bests
- 400m Hurdles (Outdoor): 1:07.82 — Stan Romanoski Open, May 3, 2025 (West Liberty University School Record)
- 400m (Indoor): 1:05.55 — Ashland Jud Logan Light Giver Open, February 6–7, 2026
- 60m Hurdles (Indoor): 10.74 — Ashland Jud Logan Light Giver Open, February 7–8, 2025
- 60m (Indoor): 9.19 — Muskie Meet #1, January 18, 2025
- 100m (Outdoor): 14.23 (wind: −3.6) — West Liberty Tim Weaver Invitational, March 28–29, 2025
