Seven East Jefferson Rivals track and field athletes traveled to Yakima to compete over three days in the 1A WIAA State Championships at Eisenhower High School. The qualifiers included four girls and three boys: seniors Fiona Fraser, Aliyah Yearian, and Ellise Gardner, Indigo Gould, Henri Huber, freshman Arden Moore, and junior Soare Johnston.

The first day of competition, Thurs., May 23, featured the 300 meter hurdles prelims and finals in the boys’ triple jump and the girls’ 1600 meter run. Arden Moore was the first EJ athlete to compete on the track and ran an aggressive race to finish in a personal record (PR) of 47.44 seconds for fourth in her heat. This was enough to move her on to the finals on Saturday. Henri Huber was seeded 15th in the triple jump and leapt to a PR of 39’ 05.25” to finish 11th in the field. In the final event of the day for EJ athletes, Fiona Fraser and Aliyah Yearian competed in the 1600 m run. Yearian ran a strong race to take third overall in a time of 5:05.08 and Fraser closed well to also clinch a podium spot finishing seventh with a PR of 5:14.54.

Day two of competition was light for the Rivals with only Yearian in the 800 meter prelims. She ran composed and powerfully to decisively win her heat by over a second in 2:19.55. This passed her on to the finals on the final day of competition. 

In Saturday finals for the 800m run, 300 hurdles, girls’  javelin, as well as the 3200 meter run for both boys and girls were contested. Yearian was the first to compete in a tightly grouped field with places three through five fighting down the final stretch and finishing within the same second. Yearian took fifth place in a time of 2:19.48 to take home her second state medal of the competition. Fraser was the next to compete in the girls’ 3200m run as the windy conditions intensified. She finished second (11:23.51) behind Hoquiam’s Jane Roloff (11:09.44) to become the Rivals’ highest state placer this year. In the 300 hurdles final Moore took a tumble on the penultimate hurdle, doing a full somersault on the track and finishing in eighth place for the final all-state award. Gardner threw a seasonal best 118’ in the javelin competition to take the fifth place podium spot with a 7’ 01” margin over sixth place. In the Rivals’ final event of the day, Johnston and Gould lined up for the 3200 m run. The race went out fast and the EJ runners fell to the back of the historically deep field. As the race progressed, Gould worked his way up to a 17th place finish in a time of 10:10.44, but Johnston was not feeling well and ended up stepping off the track and did not finish.

Head coach Ian Fraser noted that at the championships all the athletes were focused and brought what they could to the competition on that day. He also noted that the girls placed 11th overall out of 34 scoring teams.

Alice Fraser is the head cross country coach and assistant track and field coach for the East Jefferson Rivals.