OREGON — The Northern Lakes League girls track championship came down to one final event — the 4×400 meter relay, as often track meets do.

The two teams challenging for a league title at Clay Memorial Stadium Friday, Perrysburg and Toledo Whitmer, had to finish strong in the final relay. The Perrysburg girls did that, by placing second, but it was not good enough.

Whitmer finished fifth in the 4×400, and a seventh place finish by the Panthers or a first place finish by the Yellow Jackets would have swayed the final point standings in Perrysburg’s favor.

Whitmer won the NLL girls team title with 110½ points, followed by Perrysburg (109), Anthony Wayne (81), Findlay (76), Fremont Ross (75½), Springfield (51), Sylvania Northview (48), Clay (43), Sylvania Southview (29), Napoleon (25) and Bowling Green (13).

Perrysburg’s 4×400 team ran in 4:02.04 to finish less than one second behind Northview (4:01.21).

In the preliminaries, the Perrysburg team of McKenna Conley, Camille Francis, Natalie Sanders, and Ava Beeks were even slower at 4:03.74, and their seed time coming into the meet was 4:06, so coach Darryl Edge could not ask for anything more but the steady improvement they’ve provided.

“That was the best time they ran all year,” Edge said. “That was two seconds faster than they ran in prelims with the same girls, so they hit it today and that’s impressive.

“It was everything that you hope for because that is what you want — you want it to come down to that and for them to run the best race they’ve run all year, that is all I can ask for, and they finished second.”

Beeks said the fact her relay foursome hit a personal record said a lot.

“We definitely had to pull through,” Beeks said. “I don’t think we were supposed to do as well as we just did, but all of us just had to believe in ourselves and put everything we had out there.

“It’s crazy to come down to the 4×4 but I think we handled it really well and put it all out there for our team.”

Still, in an NLL that expanded from eight to 11 teams, with Maumee leaving and four new schools coming in, it made it that much tougher, Edge said. Plus, two newcomers, Whitmer (girls) and Fremont Ross (boys) ended up winning league championships.

“I’m very proud of the girls’ performance,” Edge said. “Obviously in a meet like this you add in the additional teams, the competition is really heightened but I feel like we’ve done a really good job at rising to that challenge.

“Our distance group has done a really good job today and our sprinters are really coming together and we’re really proud of that effort.”

Distance runner Hannah Kersten was the big winner, sweeping two distance events, the 1600 and 3200 and she was part of a winning relay team.

In the 1600 her time of 5:00.95 was just over two seconds slower than the league record of 4:58.32, set by Allison Work of Northview in 2012. Kersten beat second place Lily Good of Whitmer (5:04.79) and Beeks came in third at 5:07.92.

In the 3200, Kersten set a new NLL record, finishing in 10:58.59 to beat second place AW runner Hailey Kahl (11:22.15) easily.

“I tried to run really strong and tried to pace myself and not go out too fast,” Kersten said. “It takes lots of running — just running with my team a lot and they push me to be my best.

“No matter what happens, we are going to so proud of each other, but it was a really big goal for us to win the league title. We are all working toward it equally.”

Edge added, “Hannah is an incredible runner. Her dedication the last couple years, from where she was as a sophomore to now, is incredible.

“To be able to qualify for a state meet in two events is huge. So just to have that person who can go out and win a race is really big.”

Plus, Edge gets runners like Kersten and Beeks from Perrysburg’s state championship cross country team coached by Jon Monheim. Who could ask for more?

“When you have those girls coming off a state title and you know you are getting those girls for you, you know you’ve got a good leg up and that depth that he (Monheim) provides is really important,” Edge said.

The Perrysburg 4×800 team of Kersten, Sanders, Laura Valette, and Beeks finished first in 9:33.75, beating a second place AW team that finished over 22 seconds back at 9:56.11

Perrysburg also had a 4×100 relay championship — a team that finished in 50.11 seconds, just over one-quarter of a second faster than the second place team from Findlay (50.4).

In the preliminaries, that Perrysburg team of Ava Kincaid, Kinsley Jones, Francis, and Emma Ogdahl qualified for the finals with a time of 50.34. Edge says Kincaid and Francis are two athletes who have become consistent contributors in multiple events.

“Ava Kincaid has been really good for us,” Edge said. “She led off our 4×1, got third place in the hurdles, and placed fifth in the long jump.

“She was very impressive. Ava is a beast. She’s got that range where she can run our 4×4, she could have run the 8 (800) for us and she ran a really good mile.

“It was good to see Camille Francis as a sophomore get her PR in a tough hurdle race. She was able to win the league last year, so that just shows how much tougher it has gotten. Camille Francis ran our hurdles, she ran our 4×1, and then she came around and ran our 4×4.”

Edge noted that Conley, who led off the 4×400 team, also ran a 1:00.06 in the 400 to place fourth. It’s this kind of depth that is nice to have, too, says Edge. He has 65 girls in the high school program.

“It’s nice to be able to have our full 4×1 and our full 4×2 roster, and we only have one girl doubling in that,” Edge said. “But we have other girls that we can bring in fresh, which allows us to really run that out and do a good job.”