AUBURN – Amid the growing puddles beside the track at Edward Little High School, a sea of maroon and black formed beside the pole vault pit.

The huddle moved as one unit, gathering around assistant coach Tara Eretzian while dodging raindrops, preparing for the team’s annual “last lap” tradition following the season’s final home meet.

“I’ve heard it three times this year at least when we’ve walked into meets, ‘How do you manage?'” girls’ head coach Rebecca Hefty said, starting to laugh. “I don’t know.”

In three-and-a-half seasons since taking over the program, an already-deep Edward Little squad has grown exponentially.

“When this was handed over to us, we had about 40 kids,” Hefty said. “The next year was about 50, after that it was 58 and this year has been (about 70). We have 24 freshmen, 20 sophomores, 20 juniors and eight seniors.”

It’s that depth that helped the Eddies smother Lewiston, Nokomis and Mt. Ararat on Friday. The EL girls racked up 158 points, 86 better than second-place Mt. Ararat and 120 more than the third-place Blue Devils.

“Our goal three years ago was that we were going to fill the events, all of them,” Hefty said. “That was the only way we were going to build any success in our program. In this day and age, you need to cover the events, especially in the KVAC.”

Not to be outdone, the Edward Little boys are now at 106 consecutive regular-season victories and counting. Nokomis, Mt. Ararat and Lewiston became the Eddies’ latest regular-season victims.

“The kids stepped up today,” EL boys’ coach Ryan Laroche said. “Everywhere I looked, kids were getting (personal records) today: Long jump, discus, javelin, the sprints, the mile, the 800, pretty much every major event where we knew we were going head to head with the top dogs from all three schools here.”

Lewiston came into the meet hoping to put an end to Edward Little’s run, but a few missing athletes and an all-around bad day from those who were there ended those hopes early.

“It was just a bad meet,” Lewiston coach Ray Putnam said. “For whatever reason, we never run well at this meet.”

“There’s always something, too,” Laroche said, almost apologetically. “Kids are gone on vacations, there are injuries. There’s always something that seems to hurt them, which is really too bad. It seems like they give us their everything, but they don’t have enough here. It’s too bad, because I think if they were 100 percent here, it’s a much closer meet, it’s a much tighter race, and it sets the stage better early for KVACs.”

Edward Little’s boys tallied 169 2/3 points. The Blue Devils managed just 72.

Despite the loss, Lewiston’s Mohamed Noor earned wins in both events he ran, the mile and the 800, though the Eddies snuck out second and third in each of those events.

“(Tyler) Gammon really wanted Noor today,” Laroche said. “Noor ran some great races. Gammon ran some tough, tough races, he just didn’t have it today. (Jeremy) Theriault did a gutsy thing today in both of his races, too. To have them break up the Lewiston juggernaut distance team is exactly what we needed them to do.”

Jacob Dubois was a force in the throwing events for the Eddies, earning wins in the shot put and discus.

On the girls’ side, Muriel Schwinn out-paced Lewiston’s Lea Morin in the 100-meter dash by less than a tenth of a second, one of her three wins on the day. Schwinn also placed first in the long jump and helped the 4×100 team to a victory.

Emily Dodge placed first in the triple jump and in the 100-meter hurdles, Danielle Paul earned gold in the mile and two-mile, and Hanna Mogensen earned first in the 400.

Kim Archibald had a solid day in the field for the Blue Devils, placing fourth or better in all three throwing events.