BELFAST – The was no way Dan Suthers was going to lose this race. Not in his last race as a high school runner, not to a teammate, and certainly not in the final mile.

As he watched teammate Jared Cloutier sneak by him in the woods after the two-mile marker at Troy A. Howard Middle School’s cross country running course, Suthers made up his mind.

“I was like, oh no, not this time,'” said Suthers. “I wasn’t going to let him take it that easily. By the end of the race, though, I expected him to pass me again, but he never came.”

Suthers crossed the finish line in 16:57, winning the boys’ Class C individual state title and leading his top-ranked Greyhound teammates to a 25-point team win over North Yarmouth Academy on Saturday.

“As a team, this might have been our best race all year,” said Suthers, the only senior among Lisbon’s top six runners. “I mean, we were a little scared coming in, knowing that two of our runners had been sick in the last week.”

Those runners, Cloutier and Tyler Clark, finished in third and fourth respectively, while Phil Morlock ran a personal best time of 17:44 to take 11th, and Kaleb Boucher crossed in 24th place to complete the Greyhounds’ scoring.

“I think a big piece of this today was Phil coming in with a PR,” said Lisbon coach Hank Fuller. “To win with 38 points, that is satisfying. We ran sluggishly last week at regionals, with good reason I suppose, but we all talked about it this week, and how we could run better. And Dan, he was big time for us. He is a big time competitor and you look at the way he runs, he runs to peak at the right time.”

NYA, which showed better at last week’s Western regional than expected thanks to the re-emergence of an injured Jim Giberson, again showed well in the face of a powerful Lisbon team, managing to score just 63 points. Josh Kelton and Garrett Brown led the Panthers with a 6-7 finish overall.

“That team is just so deep,” said NYA coach Charlie Hudson. “Things can happen, of course, so you always have to run the race, and we ran a good one. Our front four all ran faster than we did last week, and my juniors and seniors have won two state titles, so they can at least take that away.”

Lisbon has now won two straight titles, and NYA won the two previous to the Greyhounds.

Winthrop came from a preseason prayer all the way to third place on Saturday, led by Danny Soltan, who finished eighth overall. Nick Downing, racing in his final race at Winthrop, was the Rambler’s second finisher in 15th place.

“To come as far as we have this season, this was a great run,” said Winthrop coach Jay Lindsey. “Everyone had their personal best today, and if you told me beforehand that we would be coming in in the top five, I would have been excited. Success will breed success for our program, I hope. Now we have to build on this.”

For Lisbon and Winthrop, who graduate a combined four of their top 14 runners, the future so far looks promising.

In the girls’ race on Saturday, Freeport defended its title, defeating Foxcroft Academy, NYA and Sumner in the smallest Class C team race in recent memory. Lucy Garrec led Freeport with a fourth-place finish, while Dani O’Rourke-Schuoff was the second Falcons runner across the line in eighth place.