Back at the BYU track where they had set a 4A record two weeks earlier, all the East High 4 X 400 relay team had to do Saturday was score placement points and the Leopards would win the 4A boys' state prep track championship - their first in nearly 30 years.
The expectation of most watching the concluding event of Saturday's final day of the two-day meet was that East would challenge its record time of 3 minutes, 19.15. Winning was essentially a foregone conclusion.The unthinkable - and, for East, the unfortunate - happened, as a mishap kept the relay team out of the points. Meanwhile, Davis' relay team finished third and vaulted the Darts into a tie with East for the title, each finishing with 50 team points.
Heading into the final turn on the second leg, East's Earl Posey lost the baton when it bumped another participant, with Posey then putting on the brakes - essentially collapsing to the track - in an attempt to retrieve it. By the time Posey had stood himeslf back up and retrieved the baton, East was well behind the rest and in no position for a miraculous finish in the final two laps by the sprint-standout Stowell brothers.
For East Coach Ben Stowell, the result of a blown opportunity to win the title outright followed by at least a share of the 4A championship was bittersweet. "Your expectations are so high," he said, his voice trailing off. "But things like that happen. It happened to the U.S. 4 X 400 relay team in the 1988 World Cup."
Davis Coach John Flint wasn't lost on how his Darts won a share of a second straight 4A boys' championship. "Their misfortune was our gain," he said. "It's pretty dramatic, but we'll take it."
Meanwhile, Mountain View won its first 4A girls title with 79 points - all but one point being scored on performances from underclass athletes. Bingham, with a squad nearly as young, was second with 68 points.
And the battle for the girls title was, at one time, almost as close as for the boys. With three events left, Mountain View was up by only one point at 69-68, but the Bruin girls promptly won the medley relay (4:20.33) and continued to score through the end of the meet, while Bingham was without finalists in the late-meet events.
Senior Matt Stowell and sophomore David Stowell accounted for 46 of East's 50 team points. They respectively finished 1-2 in the 400 (48.45 and 48.68), 2-3 in the 100 (11.38 and 11.47) and 2-3 in the 200 (22.08 and 22.40).
American Fork's Jeremy Dalton was .01 seconds better in the 100 with a time of 11.37, while Provo's Brad Gardner won the 200 by .20 seconds with a time of 21.88.
Other highlights from the 4A competition:
- American Fork freshman Windy Jorgensen ran like her name, winning the 100 (12.58) and the 200 (25.14) and anchoring AF's winning 4 X 100 relay (49.85) with a come-from-behind effort through the final 50 meters.
However, she strained an arch during the relay, which didn't hobble her until after she crossed the finish line in the 200. She did come back to run the third leg of the 4 X 400 relay, moving AF into the lead, which was never relinquished by teammate Michelle Schauerhammer en route to a winning time of 4:01.54.
Jorgensen was named the 4A girls athlete of the year.
- Timpview's Brandon Rhoads won the 1,600 with a time of 4:20.73, giving him a pair of distance titles following Friday's 3,200 victory. He was named as the 4A boys athlete of the year.
The top four finishers were identical both days in the distance events - Rhoads leading T-bird teammates Dan Alder and Mike Lane in second and fourth, respectively, with third going to Mountain View's Chad Bybee. The bookend 1-2-4 finishes totaled 44 points for third-place Timpview, which finished with a team total of 47.
- After Friday's thrilling finish in the 1,600, Bingham's Lynette Petersen turned the tables on Mountain View's Amy Allen with a victory in the 3,200 - 11:16.25 to 11:27.55. However, it was the only individual win this year for Petersen, who was a triple-champion as a freshman last year, as Tanya Smith of Davis won the 800 with a time of 2:17.46.
- Mountain View's Becky Perry, who won the long jump on Friday, earned a title in the 100 hurdles with a time of 15.34. She moved up in the race after defending champion Kris Bates of Clearfield suffered through an ill-timed stutter step going into the next-to-last hurdle.
- In one of the tightest races of the day, Hillcrest's Troy Nesbit and Myron Curtis finished 1-2 in the 110 hurdles with times of 14.83 and 14.87, with Roy's Jake Shulz taking third with a time of 14.88.
- Brighton won two of the boys' relays - the 4 X 100 (43.15) and the final 4 X 400 (3:21.96).