OREGON — Perrysburg sprinter Samuel Lawanson III was racing in his last league meet, so he made the best of it.

During the Northern Lakes League championships at Clay Memorial Stadium Friday, Lawanson won the 100-meter dash, finishing in 10.96 seconds to defeat Toledo Whitmer sprinter Alijah Shabazz (11.02) by less than one-tenth of a second.

“I thought it was a pretty good race — I knew most of the guys in the race,” Lawanson said. “It was fun and it was my last NLL race, so I got out and ran my best.

“It feels really good with all the hard work I’ve put in from football until now. Coach (Matt) Gosses does a real good job, and coach (Daryl) Edge does a good job training our sprinters, pushing us every day so we can run our best at NLLs and that shows, and we ran our best today.”

But the surprise of the day was Perrysburg’s winning 4×400 meter relay team, which finished in 3:24.76 to beat a second place team from Sylvania Northview (3:25.31) by a split second. That same team finished sixth during the preliminaries.

“We were going into it just trying to have fun and then it ended up with a chance, and then we just proved ourselves that we have a chance at the next level,” said Taylor Thomas.

Terry Cooper Jr. added, “I got that baton, I just knew I had to finish for our team. I pushed myself in the 400 and 200, and I had to push and finish, and we came first. I just had to finish for our team really. We were three or four behind and I just had to push it and get through it.”

Relay team member Noah Hadden said it all when he commented, “I didn’t see it coming. These aren’t our fastest guys — we had a lot of alternates.”

Gosses, the Perrysburg boys coach, said every runner on the relay team outperformed expectations.

“With the 4×400 that was a surprise a little bit because each one of them ran a PR right there for each of the legs, and then Terry, his hang time release was under 50, and tonight Terry has run a lot of things for us. I put him in everything,” Gosses said.

Gosses was also pleased with Brody Bauman’s run the 800, finishing in fifth at 1:57.19. It was Bauman coming in under two minutes that made the mark for the coach.

Then, you add senior Andrew Boden, who joined the track team this year to throw, and he placed eighth in the shot put with a toss of 45 feet, six inches.

“He threw 45, which breaks through for him,” Gosses said. “He’s a senior, played football, and he decided to come out for track his senior year and he’s just found something he likes, too. We’ve had a lot of great guys right now.”

As a team, the Yellow Jackets finished in fourth place at 69 points, but the 4×400 team’s success pushed them up from fifth.

New league member Fremont Ross won the boys NLL title with 117 points, followed by Sylvania Southview (115), Findlay (87), Perrysburg, Whitmer (65), Anthony Wayne (61.33), Sylvania Northview (50.33), Springfield (35), Clay (33), Bowling Green (23.33) and Napoleon (7).

“The NLL right now, with the addition of these teams, the distance group — that is a huge group,” Gosses said. “It’s top notch right now.

“I would really think in Northwest Ohio the NLL is probably the best league right now with a lot of these times, and I think we will be well represented throughout the state as well.”

BG’s Novinsky shines at NLL

Among that distance group is BG runner Aidan Novinsky, who finished second in the 3200 with a time of 9:29.15, less than two seconds behind AW runner Connor Long, who set a league record with a time of 9:27.75.

“I’ve been racing against most of them since I was a freshman. I do wish I would have tried a little harder to keep up with him,” Novinsky said.

“He’s actually the top two-miler in the state right now, so I feel like there is a little bit of a mental struggle going in that I already might have thought he was going to get me.

“But I think it’s a big confidence booster knowing how close I was by the end. We started a little slower than I’m used to,” Novinsky continued.

“I think everybody was pretty tired from the mile, something like 45 minutes ago, but I think pacing-wise we paced it really good in the middle of the race and we definitely all had a really strong finish, and I think that is something to be proud of.”

In the 3200, BG teammate Erek Kendrick was sixth in 9:47.23. In the 1600, Novinsky was fourth in 4:23.26 and Kendrick was sixth in 4:25.43.

“The mile went well,” Novinsky said. “I PR’d by a second. I’m not much of a miler but I still enjoy it. I got fourth, so I’ll take it on a day like today.”

Novinsky and Kendrick have been pushing each other to be better, with the older Novinsky perhaps being the mentor, but Kendrick is improving at a fast rate, the senior says.

“We run together all the time at practice and we do a lot of long runs together on the weekend — up up to 12 mile runs,” Novinsky said.

“He’s a really great junior. He’s very impressive. He’s running times much faster than I ran when I was his age, so I think he’s got a very bright future ahead of him.”

Novinsky has been working for this moment his entire career, and he will run collegiate track at the University of Findlay.

“I’ve been doing a lot of training, morning runs, doing 50- to 60-mile weeks most of the season and to finally come out here at the end and have all the hard work pay off,” Novinsky said. “I’m very excited to see what I can do at the college level.”