Raiders throw a surprise at Davis

Katelynn Schilling placed sixth in the shot put after throwing 31 feet 11 inches, beating her personal record by more than 2 feet last week.

Schilling joined Kim Barry and Jesse Adkins on the placers’ podium for the Raiders at the 84th annual Davis Invitational in Yakima.

Schilling's throw not only beat out her Central Washington 2B competition from Ashley Sabin (31 feet, 0 inches) and Alyssum Reno (30-9) of Kittitas, but also vaults her to second on the performance list at athletic.net for District 5/6.

In her other event for the day, Schilling threw the discus 72-6 for another 2-foot PR.

Kim Barry continues to be a force in the long distance races, placing in all three on Saturday. In the 800-meter run, Barry finished fourth with a time of 2 minutes 27 seconds to beat out her league competitor, Kim Bolla of Kittitas, by 10 seconds. For the 1600, Barry's time of 5:45 was good for sixth in a varsity field where all the other runners were from the Big Nine, Columbia Basin, or Central Washington Athletic Conference.

In the freshmen/sophomore race, Heidy Rodriguez of Kittitas ran a 5:57 time, the closest CWL 2B competitor to Barry for the day.

The 3200 featured only a varsity field, and Barry was the only girl from a 2B school running. Her time of 12:17 placed her fourth, behind Rachel Farris of Ellensburg’s 12:9 two mile.

Barry completed her day with a fourth-place finish in the pole vault, with a vault of 8 feet 6 inches, a foot higher than Kim Bolla's of Kittitas.

This was Barry's second time placing in all four of her events at an invitational this season.

Jesse Adkins placed 5th in the 300-meter hurdles by cutting 2.33 seconds off his previous time to achieve the PR time of 43.14 seconds.

In his other event Adkins finished 10th in the 110 high hurdles in 17.59 seconds.

Several Raiders threw or ran for PRs, but due to the size of the meet did not place. Charli Knight threw for a 10-foot PR with a 77-2 hurl of the javelin. Cheyenne Kelly-Marconi hit two PRs on Saturday in both hurdle events. In the 300 low hurdles Marconi shaved 1.33 seconds off for the new PR time of 54.22 seconds. Marconi's PR in the 100 hurdles was only one week old when she broke it with a sprint of 19.02 seconds on Saturday.

On the boys side, Sean Waters threw in all three events and hit a new shot put PR with a throw of 40-5.

The Raiders now enter the middle part of the track season, when gains in body strength are mated to gains in event technique that can propel the tracksters to late season success.

That transition begins this Friday at Royal City where the Raiders will take part in the Ron Vanderholm Invitational. This years meet features teams primarily from the 1A South Central Athletic Conference. The Raiders will be joined by CWL 2B competitors Kittitas and White Swan, both of whom feature strong teams this season.