Choosing the individuals that are worthy of our HOKA Athletes of the Week is often a difficult task. Choosing the the right male and female athletes gets even more difficult when it’s championship time, especially with meets like this past Saturday’s RIIL Indoor Track & Field Championships. Trust us, we’d like to pick all the individual winners (and more) for the weekly honor, but we simply can’t.
So what we did it narrowed it down to our only multiple champions at the Biggest Show In Town. Congratulations to West Warwick’s Lisa Raye and La Salle Academy’s Marshall Vernon, who are this week’s recipients.
Raye did what she does best when the State Meet comes around. That, of course, is win. The Wizards’ gifted sophomore found the victory stand three times this weekend, capturing the 55-meter dash, 55m hurdles and the 300m. In the 55m dash, Raye once again broke her own state record by blazing the short sprint in a nation No. 6 of 6.89 seconds. She was timed in a meet record and PR of 8.29 for the hurdles and just edged past her older sister, Xenia Raye, the last few meters of the 300m to take the gold in 39.59. If all this wasn’t enough, Raye also soared to an all-time best of 18 feet, 8.75 inches in the long jump to place third overall.
The Rams’ Vernon was just as impressive at Saturday’s meet. The talented tenth-grader was a double-winner, capturing the 3,000m and the 1,500m with times of 8:40.65 and 4:01.74, respectively. In both races he had to thwart off spirited efforts by Portsmouth’s Sean Gray (3K) and Narragansett’s Cole Francis (1,500m). Vernon also placed fourth in the 1,000m where he was timed in 2:38.84.
