When it’s a competition like the State Meet where you have the state’s elite going toe-to-toe, any of our winners could have been selected as our HOKA Athletes of the Week. So, we’d like to commend all those athletes for their recent successes at this past week’s meet. But narrowing down the candidates for this week’s honor, three very-gifted athletes stood out. Without further adieu, we’d like to congratulate West Warwick’s Lisa Raye as our female recipient and Barrington’s Ethan Knight and Chariho’s Elias Sposato as our co-male recipients.
Raye put on a show inside Conley Stadium this past weekend, one that’s never been seen before. The Wizards’ immensely-gifted sophomore left the meet with four gold medals and three state records. Raye earned her victories and state marks by capturing the 100-meter dash (11.37), 100m hurdles (14.04) and 300m hurdles (42.53). She capped off the day with the fastest 200m of her young career, blazing to an astonishing 22.73. It was an effort that wasn’t recognized as a state record due to the fact that it was wind-aided, but was stunning nonetheless and currently sits atop the national rankings.
For our male recipient, we simply couldn’t decide between Sposato and Knight so decided the best way to handle our dilemma was to pick them both.
The talented athletes were each double winners at Saturday’s meet. Sposato defended his title in the 400m with an all-time best of 47.85. The Charger senior added the 200m crown by breaking the meet record with a time of 21.44. Knight was a big part of the Eagles capturing the school’s first outdoor state crown. The BHS standout swept the hurdles with wins in the 110m HH (14.31) and 300m IH (38.40). Knight concluded the day by anchoring the third-place 4x400m (3:25.11) with a 49-second split.
