Thomas stars in 800 at Meet of Champions

More than 200 athletes compete at Washington-Oregon track and field meet

By Tony Dondero

Enterprise reporter

SHORELINE

King’s Olivia Thomas faced her stiffest challenge this season in the 800 meters at the Brooks Meet of Champions, May 31 at Woolsey Stadium on the King’s High School campus.

Thomas rose to the occasion, fending off two top-notch competitors to win in a personal best time of 2 minutes, 14.34 seconds.

The Meet of Champions held the week after the Oregon and Washington state meets, includes some of the top track and field athletes from Oregon and Washington.

Thomas led most of the race but not by much until the last 100 meters.

A couple entrants, who had times of 2:13, including Oak Harbor’s Mietra Smollack the second-place finisher in the 800 at the state 4A meet, did not show for the race.

Thomas had hoped to face them, but she still got challenged by Squalicum’s Sophie Curl and Mead’s Baylee Miles.

Thomas also ran on the King’s 1,600 relay team that included Erin Bremond, Hillary Quinn and Megan Northey. The squad finished fourth in a time of 4:05.49. A Washington team won in 3:51.63.

Thomas will take a couple weeks off and then will start training for the cross country season in the fall.

“That’s what I’m going to be doing: running and running and running,” Thomas said.

She is the defending 1A state champion and King’s is the two-time defending team champion. The Knights are favored to win the title again.

On the boys side, King’s junior Josh Fuller took some ibuprofen to alleviate a sore hamstring and finished second in the 200 behind Cedar Park Christian’s Zach Keene, who won the state 1A title in the event.

“It felt a lot better than state,” Fuller said. “It’s fun running against him.”

King’s senior Tony Yakovich competed in the triple jump and finished third with a jump of 43 feet, 0.25 inches. He also did the long jump and came in fifth with a leap of 20-11. Yakovich will att end Western Washington in the fall and try out for track.

King’s senior Austin Dean was a late entry in the 300 hurdles and finished fifth in 40.88.

“I just wish I could have competition like that every time, because that was so much fun.” Dean said. “Even though I lost pretty bad it was still pretty cool.”

Dean, the state 1A runner up in the 300 hurdles, will attend University of Washington next year and hopes to walk onto the track team.

The turnout for the meet was 207 athletes. It was held at King’s for the second straight year after it moved from Lewis &Clark College in Portland. More Washington athletes came but there were fewer from Oregon came because of a competing meet at Lewis &Clark in Portland and also possibly because of high gas costs. Participants received free uniforms and gear from Brooks including free spikes to the first 50 athletes to arrive.