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It was one of the final races of the 2019 outdoor season. Watkins Mill led the 3A boys team standings with 55 points, and Huntingtown sat in second with 48. In the prior heat, Milford Mill and Manchester Valley had treated the spectators at Morgan State to a preview of what was to come in the third and final section.
Four teams - Blake, Huntingtown, Oxon Hill and Poly - handed off onto the anchor leg at a near dead heat. What made the final leg of the relay so exciting was that none of the four teams had a true superstar on their anchor, someone who ran away from the field within 100 meters and never looked back. Instead, the four anchor legs matched each other nearly stride for stride around the entire track. Even with just 50 meters to go, it was anyone's guess as to who would pull it off. Huntingtown held the inside, but both Blake and Poly were charging hard in lanes two and three.
A slightly premature lean from Blake's final runner may have been enough for Huntingtown, who edged Blake's squad by just four hundredths of a second. Poly followed just another seven hundredths of a second behind them, while Oxon Hill "faded" into fourth, still just a mere 0.64 seconds behind the winners. Huntingtown needed at least eight points (second place) to win the team title; they got ten. Had the Hurricanes run just eight hundredths of a second slower, they would have scored just six points and finished one point behind Watkins Mill in the team standings.