Perhaps it was fitting that the meet, which saw one changing of the guard at the winners podium, saw the new boys team champion, Battlefield, earn a fair number of its points in the field.
The Bobcats tallied 26 of its 54 points in field events. While the Haymarket team did not win an individual event, three athletes - Brian DiBassinga, Austin Gallant, and Jonas Davidson reached the leaderboard for Coach Jarrette Marley's team.
DiBassinga placed second in the triple jump (47-7.5) and seventh in the pole vault. Davidson placed better in the vault with his 14-foot leap good enough for third. Gallant, the indoor Class 6 shotput champ, took fifth in both the shot and discus.
In all, the Bobcats totaled 54 points, 10 ahead of perennial champion Western Branch.
T.C. Williams senior thrower Wisdom Williams was a convincing double winner in the girls' throws on Saturday. Williams tossed the discus 137 feet, four inches, two feet longer than Branch's Shawne Marinn Murphy. The Titan came back to dominate the shotput with a 47-foot, half-inch heave, a state meet record.
Teammates Joshua Peterson and David Coles won the boys' long (24-10) and triple jumps (48-2.5).
For Peterson, a senior, the road to victory was circuitous and painful.
"I missed two years of competition with a stress fracture in my back and tibia," said Peterson. "I had just put too much pressure on them while running in ninth grade."
The winning long jump was over a two-foot improvement from his previous best of 22-8.
Why even come back? "Coach (Mike) Hughes told me, "you're going to be a jumper." Said his Titan coach, "Rome wasn't built in a day."
Osbourn Park sophomore Lena Gooden was one of only two entries (with Westfield's Emma Seetoo) to post a 20-foot seed, but Gooden was the only jumper to clear 20, winning with a 20-3.75 leap. Seetoo was much closer in the triple jump, hop, skip, and jumping 40-3.5, but fell a mere half-inch short to winner Madison McConico of Thomas Dale.
"I had to run the 100, so my goal was to get a good first jump," said Gooden. "Fortunately, my first jump went over 20, so I could pass on the next two." Gooden, who won four events at the Yellow Jackets' region meet, also placed second in the 400 (57.78) and fourth in the 100 (12.24).
Two Liberty District athletes had surprising wins. Yorktown's Viktorie Klepetkova, a native of Prague, Czech Republic, cleared 5 feet, 5-2, and 5-4 without failure to top a trio of jumpers and win the high jump at 5-4. Langley thrower Dike Illoh completed a 40-foot improvement over the course of the outdoor season to win the discus in 161-2.
David Frasier of Western Branch edged Hayfield's Xavier Carmichael by an inch to win the boys high jump with a 6-4 leap.
Colgan's Alencia Lentz won the girls pole vault with an 11-6 clearance. Hayfield's Christian Nicol Antonio topped a quartet of 14-foot vaulters to win based on fewest misses.
