TACOMA — Eleven months ago, Cody Hayes was an eighth grader at Bush Middle School lighting up Olympia’s Ingersoll Stadium by throwing 140 feet in javelin at the Olympia All-Comers track meet on June 19, 2025.
Exactly 345 days later, Hayes stands alone as the only freshman in any classification in Washington state to win a state javelin championship in at least the last 25 years.
The Tumwater High School freshman has taken a meteoric rise in his first prep postseason. After upping his personal record by 13 feet to win the district title last week, Hayes broke his lifetime best mark by another almost 5 feet Saturday at the state meet, tossing 178 feet, 1 inch, to triumph in the event.
“It means everything to me. I’d like to thank all of my teammates and all of my competitors,” Hayes said. “They all helped get the motivation that I needed to be able to do this.”
A 13-foot PR doesn’t just fall from the sky, but Hayes walked into Mount Tahoma’s stadium this weekend questioning whether he could match the dominance he displayed at Bearcat Stadium last week. He was the top seed in the 2A state field, and the last thing he wanted to be was a one-hit wonder.
“I thought that maybe it was a fluke what I did at districts, and it wasn’t,” Hayes said.
Hayes is the second boys javelin state champion in Tumwater history and the first since Devon Shedd-Kirkland in 2016.
Hayes, equipped with Pit Viper sunglasses and bleached blonde hair, jumped into second place from the moment his first throw hit the grass at 167-10. But his competitors in the second flight pushed him into fourth place heading into his last attempt before finals, and Hayes ripped a throw of 175-3 to set a new PR and vault into first place.
But on the first toss of the final round, he came back to earth only for a moment and fouled the attempt.
“I just so happened to drop my arm, and it went straight into the ground,” Hayes said.
Anxiety swelled up in Hayes’ brain in the final round, as the certainty of his first-place spot began to shrink. W.F. West senior Peyton Santiago launched his final throw at 173-6, and Orting’s Isaiah Gilcrist concluded his run at 174-11. While in the air, however, both throws looked good enough to surpass Hayes.
It wouldn’t have mattered for long if those throws did unseat Hayes, as the freshman phenom sent his final attempt further than any in his life: 178 feet, 1 inch. Only one other Tumwater Thunderbird has ever thrown that far. Hayes credited the energy from the crowd for the PR, as he asked for the attendees to hype him up by clapping before his throw, a strategy he had never tried before but certainly found effective.
Two of the top three finishers in the event came from the EvCo, as Hayes and Santiago have battled all spring in javelin en route to top-three medals at state. While Hayes’ ascension was rapid, Santiago’s was more steady and filled with bumps along the way.
Santiago tore his right hamstring just before last year’s district meet, and he tore his left hamstring at the Bear Relays on March 21 running the throwers’ 4x100 relay. He missed just under a month of action after the injury this season and returned at Chehalis Activators to throw a PR in the javelin of 178-2. Santiago finished in the top two in every meet up until his first trip to state, where he completed his track career with a third-place medal at a top throw of 173-6.
“It was very important to me to be able to make it to state this year. It’s a big accomplishment,” he said. “I wasn’t able to finish with the results that I wanted, but ultimately, I made it to state and I got third place. There’s not a lot of people that can say they got third place at state.”
Following his second hamstring tear, Santiago was certain his track career was over. But through vigorous rehabilitation, he exceeded the expectations of his doctors, who initially told him he’d miss eight weeks. Instead, he was back in about five weeks.
This season, Santiago honed in on a crossover stride rather than a full stride, shortening his run-up and requiring more upper-body strength. It allowed him to go toe to toe in the state finals with Hayes, a pairing that developed a strong relationship throughout the season.
“When I think of me and him, it’s iron sharpens iron. He’s gotten so much better, and I’m really proud of the kid,” Santiago said of Hayes. “I’m really excited to see what he does in the future.”
“Peyton’s a great dude. After our last throws, we hugged each other and we cried,” Hayes said of Santiago. “With him being a senior and it was his last throw of his high school career, that obviously meant a lot to him. It means a lot to me because I’ve been there with him.”
Hayes helped the Tumwater boys team finish third in the standings with 50 points. This year’s state track meet concluded the same as how last year’s ended, with the boys 4x400 relay team finishing in second place. However, this year’s Thunderbirds quartet smashed the school record by over two seconds, crossing the finish line at 3:19.16.
The bitter disappointment of the second-place finish outweighed the joy of the school record in the moments following the race, especially for senior Blake Kirkpatrick, who was passed in the final 50 meters by Anacortes. Kirkpatrick was also the finisher for last year’s 4x400 relay.
“In the moment, second place hurt pretty bad. I couldn’t really process the fact that it was a school record because we’ve been talking about winning this 4x400 for the whole season,” Kirkpatrick said. “It’s been the goal my entire high school career. Now that a little bit of time has passed, it’s really set in that we just ran a sub-3.20, which is another huge goal that we’ve always had, and demolished the school record. That felt just as good.”
It’s been a whirlwind season for Kirkpatrick in his final track campaign at Tumwater. In September, he broke his tibia and his fibula, and he wasn’t supposed to be able to start jogging until late December or early January.
But by that timeframe, Kirkpatrick was already beginning to sprint again, and by the spring, he was in full form. He broke the school record in the 100-meter dash on April 25 at 10.57, and he appeared primed to be back in the top five at state in both sprint events.
After he strained his hamstring at the league meet, however, Kirkpatrick struggled at the district championships the following week and missed the state qualifying marks for both the 100 meters and the 200 meters. Through a simple message from his strength and conditioning coach, Kirkpatrick was able to gut out the last leg of the 4x400 relay finals and secure a school record.
“His motto is ‘Keep fighting,’ so I’ve just been telling myself that over and over again,” Kirkpatrick said. “And here I am sitting with a new school record in the 4x400 after not knowing if I was gonna run, twice.”
The Tumwater 4x400 relay team was made up of Kirkpatrick, Logan Budd, Owen Reamer and Jaxon Budd, the latter of which also finished fourth in the 2A 100-meter finals at 11.02 seconds. Tumwater’s boys secured three individual state titles: Jaxon Budd in the long jump, Reamer in the high jump and Hayes in the javelin.
Tumwater junior Laurent Opoku also secured his second career state medal in the 200 meters, clocking a fifth-place time of 22.67 seconds. Opoku, like Santiago and Kirkpatrick, also dealt with injuries, including shin splints and a hamstring injury. But in the postseason, the Ellensburg transfer and first-year Thunderbird continued to lower his 200-meter times, running sub-23 seconds for the first time in districts and then twice at state.
“It’s magical. The team has accepted me. With being new, I felt kind of awkward, but they’ve accepted me and pushed me and helped me believe in myself,” Opoku said.
