For those of us who have never been Olympians, here’s how housing works: Typically, you get paired randomly with another athlete from your country in the Olympic Village. But Team USA does try to accommodate roommate requests.

For Isabella Whittaker, one of the runners in Team USA’s 400-meter relay pool in Paris next month, there was a no-brainer choice: her younger sister, Juliette Whittaker, who is running the 800-meter race.

The two girls shared a bedroom for much of their lives until Isabella (who goes by Bella) went to the University of Pennsylvania in 2020. You could imagine perhaps wanting a little space from a sibling you’ve spent that much time with over the years. Not so for Bella.

“It’ll be fun to be doing that again,” she said. “It’s kind of like a sleepover every night.”

Being roommates is just a piece of the surreal life for the Whittaker sisters, who are from Laurel and attended Mount de Sales Academy, an all-girls Catholic school in Catonsville that does not even have its own track on campus. The first-time Olympians are still wrapping their heads around going to Paris together to represent their country, which Juliette admits “would kind of surpass any dreams we had in the sport.”

The only people who might be further over the moon than the sisters themselves are their parents, Paul Whittaker and Jill Pellicoro. Paul is the track coach at Mount de Sales, overseeing the daily caravan visits to nearby Mount Saint Joseph High School for practice. When he was in Eugene, Oregon, for the Olympic trials, watching both of his daughters qualify for the Games nearly made him pass out, he said.

“If they can make it to the finals at the Olympics,” he said, “I may need to be resuscitated.”

While Bella, 22, and Juliette, 20, are relatively early in their track careers, making the Olympics has been a long time coming.

Juliette has long outpaced her peers, breaking the U.S. high school 800-meter record as a senior in 2022 and winning the U20 championship in the event. She now runs for Stanford, winning the 800 meters at indoor and outdoor nationals this year.

She placed 10th in the 800 in the U.S. Olympic trials in 2021 as a teenager — Ajeé Wilson, who went on to compete in Tokyo, told her at the time, “We’ll see you in three [years],” which a thrilled Juliette wrote in a diary: “I remember being like, ‘Oh my gosh, did she just say that to me?’”

Bella’s path to Paris wasn’t as direct as her precocious younger sister’s. She’s competed in several sprinting distances at Penn, and she overcame a 2021 back injury to set several school and Ivy League records. Even now, though, Bella’s way forward isn’t so clear-cut: She may run in the 4x400 meter relay, or the mixed event — a sort of “on-call” spot for Team USA.

“I’m fully preparing myself to get to relay camp and be ready to show that I can be put in wherever they need,” Bella said, “and that I can be adaptable and flexible.”

Paul has a hard time grasping how far his daughters have come. It was only eight years ago when the family was watching the 2016 Olympics as Broadneck alum Matt Centrowitz won gold in the 1,500 meters. They vacationed on the Eastern Shore, inventing their own “Olympic contests” with such events as egg relays, race walking and kayaking. No one can remember if there were medals involved — “but there was a point system,” Juliette noted.

The sisters, who have two older brothers, including former Yale distance runner Alex Whittaker, had their earliest Olympic dreams in swimming, idolizing Katie Ledecky (another Maryland native and Stanford Cardinal standout). But, after years on the swim team, both quit in the same year to focus on track. (“It’s the only time I’ve ever been OK with my kids quitting something,” Paul said.)

They have different personalities — Bella is more introverted, while Juliette was class president — run different distances, and now compete on different coasts. But a binding thread of their training was that neither got intimidated by how tough a workout was. “They weren’t afraid to hurt,” Paul said bluntly.

It has always helped to have each other’s support at meets, an increasingly uncommon occurrence now that they live thousands of miles apart. In Paris, the Whittaker sisters foresee their familial bond as a significant mental edge for the highest-pressure meet of their lives.

“When it all becomes really, really big and you start to get stressed out — everything becomes a bit overwhelming — she’ll put her bag next to mine in the warm-up area, and I’ll be like, ‘Oh wait, Juliette is here,’” Bella said. “It’s a good reminder to take it less seriously and just enjoy it.”

Coming this far takes a village. On Wednesday, a crowd of several hundred well wishers gathered at Mount de Sales for an Olympic send-off. Attendees included former classmates, teachers, coaches, swim teammates — even the track competitors who saw them get their initial lead on the pack. School officials presented them with rosaries, a signed poster and other trinkets — and played a video reel of people from their past wishing them good luck.

Pellicoro’s arms overflowed with homemade brownies and other goodies brought by the attendees, and lines piled up for selfies with the Paris-bound Whittakers.

“It’s great to see how much they’ve touched people inside and outside the sport,” said Pellicoro, who is a pediatrician.

It might take years to see the full payoff of the Whittaker sisters’ Olympic journey. On the current Mount de Sales track team, girls who haven’t trained over the summer before are putting in extra work this July, Paul said.

They see the Whittakers and wonder if they might be next.

“I think my girls are gonna really inspire my team,” he said.