Each of the last two 2B District 4 championship meets at W.F. West High School have concluded in eerily similar ways for the Rainier Mountaineers.
On May 17, 2024, the Rainier girls celebrated a district championship by doing cartwheels in the grass, moments after Jazzlyn Shumate finished off the 4x400 relay to cap off the day.
On Thursday, the Rainier girls celebrated their second straight district championship by doing cartwheels in the grass, moments after Shumate finished off their second consecutive 4x400 relay win to cap off the day.
Sound familiar? But wait, the déjà vu doesn’t stop there.
The Mountaineers, who scored 180 points and 59 more than second-place Adna, repeated as champions in five events, including the 4x400 relay, Shumate in the 400 meters, Madison Ingram in the 800 meters, and Ella Marvin in the pole vault. Ingram, who won the 3,200 meters last spring, did not compete this spring and passed the torch to freshman Komaire Robles, who finished 68 seconds before anyone else.
In addition, Acacia Murphy won the high jump and 100-meter sprint Thursday after placing second and third, respectively, in those events last year. The senior was also a member of Rainier’s second-place 4x100 relay team.
“I just felt confident all the way through. My start was perfect, and by the end, I still had my breath and I still felt confident like I could run even more,” Murphy said of her 100-meter win, her second career district title in the event.
Robles competed in two events and set two new personal bests, but her two distance runs were wildly different. She lapped multiple runners en route to a dominant 3,200 win, but she, Ingram and fellow freshman Alexis Myers ran as a group in the 1,600 meters to take the top three spots with Robles in second behind Ingram. Ingram finished less than two seconds ahead of Robles, who crossed the finish line a second and a half before Myers.
“She’s got so much more in the tank,” Rainier head coach Rob Henry said of Robles. “If you watch her, she got done and walked nicely over to her mom. I was like, ‘OK, this is crazy.’”
Henry believes the trio running as a flock can be a successful strategy in Yakima, where the 1,600 meters resulted in what he called a “circus” for Rainier last spring.
“Last year, we had really bad luck in the mile with Maddie running out of her shoe in the first 100 meters and Angelica [Askey] didn’t know what to do at that point,” he said. “It was kind of a little circus. I think by having the way they ran today, it will help them calm down and just run their race.”
Shumate established a new PR in the 100-meter hurdles to come in third at 17.46 seconds and was less than a second away from a district title in the 200 meters. Anika Plowman earned a top-three finish in the 300-meter hurdles, and the trio of Ingram, Rayanna Wisner and Myers took the top three spots in the 800 meters. Sophomore Kinsley Barlow will head to state thanks to a third-place mark in the 3,200 meters.
Janess Blackburn, who recently broke the school record in discus, finished in second behind back-to-back state champion Karsyn Freeman of Adna to set up what should be a compelling state matchup next week.
“I have to not think too much about the competition and just go out there and do my thing. It’s really a battle against myself instead of a battle against my peers,” Blackburn said. “I want to win at state, not districts.”
Marvin, who earned a second straight 10-foot-6 jump at districts to win the pole vault crown, will be joined in Yakima by freshman Emma Mankowski, who placed second at 7-6. Plowman also qualified for state in long jump with a fourth-place leap after winning the title last year.
Murphy, a 2023 state champion in high jump, had quite the competition from an unlikely opponent in Adna freshman Carmen Chapman. In just her 12th career meet, Chapman broke the school high jump record with a jump of 5-2, nailing the historic jump on her first try.
“It meant a lot. I’ve struggled with injuries over this past year, so the fact that I get to be out here and just doing high jump means a lot to me,” Chapman said. “My main goal this year was just to get over 5 feet, and getting over 5-2 was my next goal. I was really emotional and I started crying.”
Both Murphy and Chapman tried 5-4 jumps but could not convert, and Murphy squeaked out a victory as she had four misses compared to Chapman’s six.
Adna, which scored 121 points, won five events Thursday, with senior Karsyn Freeman playing a role in three of them. She defeated Blackburn in the discus by recording the ninth-best throw in Washington this spring at 138-11, and she helped the Pirates win both the 4x100 and 4x200 relays. Senior Lydia Tobin earned the javelin title, and senior Sorena Neilson broke her personal best in the 100-meter hurdles to win the event.
Onalaska, fifth with 47 points, was led by standout thrower Kiley Talley once again as she took home her second straight district shot put championship. She narrowly missed her best throw of her career, landing her fifth attempt of the day two and a half inches shy of a new PR.
Winlock’s Victoria Sancho earned the 200-meter crown while placing second in both the 100 meters and the triple jump. Toledo freshman Lilly Cooper emerged victorious in the long jump with a lifetime best leap of 15-6.5, which was also good for the best mark for a freshman in school history.
