TACOMA — As far as Anna Adamko is concerned, some of the credit for this state title goes to her mom.
The Columbia River junior, competing on her 17th birthday, won the girls discus Thursday at the Class 3A state track and field meet at Mount Tahoma High School. And to hear her tell it, the championship seemed unlikely two weeks ago.
“My mom, she was telling me my form wasn’t correct,” Adamko said. “I wasn’t bending my left knee and driving.”
Is mom a discus expert?
“No, she’s not,” Adamko said. “But she’s an awesome mom and she watches.”
The result was a big improvement in Adamko’s performance. She beat her previous personal record by 7 feet at last week’s bi-district meet, and improved on it again at state with her winning mark of 126 feet, 11 inches.
She also had two other throws that would have bested the mark of 120-10 by runner-up Katie Higgins from Glacier Peak of Snohomish.
“I’m a pretty competitive person,” Adamko said. “If somebody had thrown farther, I know I could push enough to beat them by a couple inches.”
She didn’t need to worry about that, as her winning mark came in the first round.
Adamko is accustomed to performing well at the state meet. She won the javelin title last year, and is the No. 1 seed in that event for today’s competition. She also is seeded fourth in Saturday’s shot put.
Dare she dream about winning three state championships in one meet?
“That wasn’t in my mind for this,” Adamko said. “But I thought maybe for next year, if all goes well.”
So far, so good.
In other girls results from the Class 2A, 3A and 4A state meets:
• Johna McEllrath finished sixth in the 3A girls javelin won by Adamko with a mark of 115-5. Amica Cranston, a freshman from Union, was 14th.
• The 3A girls 3,200-meter run featured a slew of Clark County runners. Columbia River’s Allison Clark and Sarah Bobbe finished fifth and sixth, and Camas’ Kayla Blackford and Camille Parsons were seventh and 10th.
• Kelley Young of Washougal qualified fourth in the 2A 100 hurdles, and Kelly Nigro of Woodland advanced as the No. 7 seed. Shelby Williams of Ridgefield recorded the ninth-best time and just missed reaching the finals.
• Heather Browning of Union was sixth in the 3A high jump, and Lauren Neff of Camas was eighth. They both are freshmen.
• Whitney Swenson of Battle Ground advanced to the finals in the 4A 100 hurdles with the third-best qualifying time. Swenson finished in 15.22 seconds, while Kayla Stueckle from Emerald Ridge of Puyallup — the meet record holder — ran a 14.48.
• Camas reached the final of the 3A girls 800-meter relay with the third-best qualifying mark. The Papermakers also advanced in the girls 1,600 relay, where they will defend their state title.
• In the Class 2A girls javelin, Christine Kirkwood of Othello set an all-time state best of 162-10. That broke the mark set in 2007 by her sister, Courtney.
Christine Kirkwood now has back-to-back state titles, giving the family five in a row as Courtney won three.
