BRUNSWICK – The host Brunswick Dragons were just too strong and deep for Edward Little to overcome, but the Eddies gave it a solid shot at the KVAC Indoor Track and Field Championships Friday night.

“We knew we had about a 20-point gap coming in,” EL coach Ryan Laroche said. “We needed some of the younger kids to have a great day.”

Though several of Laroche’s younger athletes did step up, so did many of Brunswick’s.

The Eddies trailed Brunswick through 11 of the 21 events, and hung close until late, when a strong finish by three Brunswick runners in the two-mile all but shut the door.

“We had some great performances all day,” Laroche said. “We swept the sprint events, junior and senior, we dominated the throws like we expected, and Nick Kazar got to where he should be in the mile.”

The Dragons led with an impressive 177 points, 23 better than second-place Edward Little, with two events to score. Lewiston scraped plenty of points together down the stretch and was third with 105.

Edward Little and rival Lewiston started the meet as the Dragons’ chief rivals, and the Blue Devils were even seeded a bit better that EL, but that all changed with the flick of an ankle early in the meet.

Multi-sport star Jared Turcotte fell one place in the 55-meters after feeling tightness in one leg, and on his first jump in the long jump, Turcotte twisted his ankle.

His night was over.

“May ankle just folded,” Turcotte said. “I don’t know what happened.”

Lewiston coach Ray Putnam, who tried to put one of his top distance runners, George Foster, in back-to-back events, nearly conceded the meet less than halfway through, after Foster failed to place in one of his strongest events and hearing the news about Turcotte.

“We’re a much better state team than a team for this event anyway,” Putnam said, “but this does still hurt. Now we go for individual performances.”

Later, Putnam admitted that putting Foster in both events was a mistake.

“Better this week than next week to find that out,” Putnam said.

EL, meanwhile, got surprise finishes by Ryan Getchell in the 55 (second place) and in the 200 (fifth).

“I’ve been sketched out all day about this meet,” Getchell said. “In the 55, I looked down, and the next thing I knew I heard the gun and took off after it.”

Getchell was seeded third in what was expected to be a two-horse race between Turcotte and No. 1 seed John Alexander of Edward Little. But Getchell caught Turcotte late and finished right behind his teammate.

“As long as I’ve been racing with John, he’s always been that fast, and always pushed it,” Getchell said. I wish I could be that fast.”

Alexander was one Edward Little athlete who did exactly what Laroche expected. The senior sprinter logged first-place finishes in both the 55- and 200-meter dashes.

“He’s a big-time athlete and we needed his points tonight,” Laroche said.

Brunswick, meanwhile, edged Lewiston in the 4×800-meter relay to start the night, and then snagged a bevy of points with three runners in the top six in the mile run and in the two-mile.

Eric Marceau, the lone Mt. Blue runner in the meet, nearly won two long-distance events, but was disqualified in the mile, leaving him just the 800-meter run in which to compete.

He won the race handily.

“I knew I had to just kill myself in the 800,” Marceau said. “I’m more of a cross country runner and a two-miler, but I didn’t run the two-mile indoors, so I had all my energy left after that mile.”

In the girls’ meet, Mt. Ararat and Brunswick had a solid battle going all night, and Edward Little was hanging tough with one of its younger teams in recent memory.

“It’s great that we have such a big team,” sophomore Muriel Schwinn said. “We had so many sophomores come back after last season, and we have a lot of freshmen, too. People are telling their friends to come out.”

Schwinn won the long jump Friday night, and watched as a slew of young Eddies finished at or above their seed times and distances.

Hannah Mogensen was one of those runners. She started the night seeded eighth in the 800-meter run, and gutted out a third-place finish, and also improved from 15th to sixth in the two-mile.

“We came in with low expectations and a bit under the radar,” EL coach Rebecca Hefty said. “But we’re so young, these girls can have nights like this without warning.”

Brunswick finished first in the girls’ meet with 133 1/2 points to sweep the KVAC meet, and Mt. Ararat came in second on the girls’ side with 93.5.

Edward Little followed in third with 89.5.