The death of any young person is jarring, even more so when it is an athlete, someone in the prime of his or her physical powers. But the passing of someone like Madison Holleran is truly difficult to comprehend.

Holleran, the former soccer and track star at Northern Highlands High School, died Friday night in Philadelphia, where she was a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania. She was 19.

This was a young woman who appeared to have it all: smarts, beauty, athletic talent and a winning personality. Her high school sports career was truly charmed: she was a two-time All-State soccer player whose Northern Highlands teams went unbeaten in both her junior and senior seasons. And she was one of the state's best runners, who won the Meet of Champions 800-meter race as a senior.

Perhaps in the coming days we will gain a better understanding of why this happened, but at this time we simply join the rest of the New Jersey sports community in shock and sadness.

This terrible news reminds us of A.E. Housman's famous poem To An Athlete Dying Young. It was written about a young man, but otherwise feels sadly appropriate:

The time you won your town the race,

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down,

Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay

And early though the laurel grows

It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut

Cannot see the record cut,

And silence sounds no worse than cheers

After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,

The fleet foot on the sill of shade,

And hold to the low lintel up

The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,

And find unwithered on its curls

The garland briefer than a girl's.