AUGUSTA — The boys’ half of Thursday’s Mountain Valley Conference track and field championship came down to a match race between a Hall-Dale 4×400 relay squad that hadn’t run together all season and a Lisbon group out of its customary order.

The Greyhounds’ shuffled deck finished one spot ahead of the Bulldogs’ stacked deck, and it was enough to clinch a Lisbon sweep of the meet for the eighth consecutive year at Alumni Field.

Lisbon’s quartet of Ben Kates, Austin Bedford, Charles Adams and Jordon Torres finished second, one spot ahead of Hall-Dale’s Sam Shepherd, Ezra Jones, Mike Woods and Harry Cheung.

Two-and-a-half seconds was the margin that gave Lisbon a two-point gain and the overall victory, 133 to 129.5. Had the results been flip-flopped, the league would have crowned a new champion for the first time since 2005.

“This was scary. Hall-Dale did everything we expected them to do and more so,” Lisbon coach Dean Hall said. “It’s hard to win it this many times without good competition, and we had great competition.”

At least there were no cases of elevated blood pressure or shortened fingernails for Lisbon on the girls’ side.

The Greyhounds made it a great eight in resounding fashion, with senior Kayla Angelico’s four wins setting the blistering pace. Lisbon beat runner-up Boothbay by nearly 70 points.

“Everyone stepped it up,” said Angelico, who dominated the javelin and 300-meter hurdles and anchored victories by the 4×400 and 4×800 relays. “If they were seeded fifth they were getting fourth.”

Seeds meant next to nothing in the fateful boys’ relay finale.

Kates nursed an illness throughout his finishes of second in the racewalk, third in the 4×800 and fifth in the 800 earlier in the afternoon. It prompted Hall to move him from the anchor leg of the 4×400 to the starting block.

“Ben is our strongest guy (in the relay), but today his eyes were rolling all over the place after the racewalk and the 800,” Hall said. “We had to switch him in the 4×4 and move him to first place so he would run less. The guy who runs first gets about 390 (meters) because of stagger. The guys who runs last gets about 410.”

Torres took on the extra workload, but it was a sensational third leg by Adams that landed Lisbon the second spot for keeps.

Lisbon’s regular-season seeded time in the event was 11 seconds faster than Hall-Dale’s.

“We had to do something we’ve never done before. By the stats we thought we had Hall-Dale the whole time, but they definitely proved us wrong. We had to step up our game,” Adams said. “I was asking God for strength, seriously. I was desperate. I saw (Hall-Dale’s third runner) grab the baton before me and I had to put it all in that stretch there.”

Thanks to Adams nearly landing the lead at the end of the third leg, Torres had the advantage of an escort.

With Monmouth anchor Marcques Houston leading the Mustangs to a meet record of 3:37.78, Torres tried to keep pace and never looked over his shoulder.

“He was definitely making me go faster,” Torres said. “I was just looking forward, trying to get to that finish line.”

“I think he ran one of the fastest 400s of his life,” Hall added.

Hall-Dale went down fighting with four seniors, each of whom played an integral role in keeping the Bulldogs’ title hopes alive going into the final event.

Shepherd won the 300 hurdles and high jump, joining Tyler Fitzgerald (100, 200) as a double winner.

“They’re four senior boys who when I first came to Hall-Dale three years ago, they gravitated right to me. Those four boys, those four men, they gave it hard for their team today, and I love them absolutely to the ends of the earth,” Hall-Dale coach Jarod Richmond said. “Our goal all year has been to help take our program a step forward, and we did that today. It’s a step forward, not a step backward.”

Hall had spent the week crunching numbers, weighing the seeds and projecting results. His final tally before leaving school Thursday — Lisbon 135, Hall-Dale 131 — nearly hit it on the nose.

“About halfway through the meet, after seeing the results of the triple jump and long jump, I went over and congratulated Jarod and said, ‘Hey, you got it.’ You can make predictions all you want, but you’re making predictions about kids 14, 15, 16, 17 years old. Good luck with that,” Hall said.

Lisbon pulled off the team title with only a single event victory — Tyler Bard in the racewalk, 25 seconds ahead of Kates.

Aaron Halls was runner-up to Fitzgerald in the 100 and 200. The Greyhounds’ trio of Adams, Brandon Laurelez and Ben Pettingill went 2-3-4 and 3-4-5 in the two hurdle events, pocketing oodles of points.

“It continues. You just have to replenish it each year,” Hall said. “It gets harder. I’m not getting any younger, either.”

In addition to Angelico’s perfect day, the Lisbon girls reaped individual titles from Kaitlyn Doustou (high jump), Mia Durgin (pole vault), Olivia Bulgin (race walk) and freshmen Bree Sautter (400) and Adrianna White (800).

“Freshman to seniors, we had everyone stepping up and doing the best they could,” Hall said. “We were methodical. We took three places in a lot of events.”

Local athletes went home with three of the four “athlete of the meet” awards.

St. Dom’s junior Marley Byrne was named the top performer in girls track. She won the 100 and 200.

“Coming into the meet I was seeded first, but I knew getting here it was anybody’s race,” Byrne said. “It’s been a hard year, but a lot of success has come out of it.”

Rachel Ingram of Winthrop swept the long jump and triple jump on her way to girls’ field athlete laurels.

Josef Holt-Andrews was the elite boys’ runner. The Telstar standout cruised to victory in the 800, 1,600 and 3,200.

“I haven’t really been racing hard a lot, because I’ve been waiting to save it for the end of the season,” he said.

The Dirigo girls edged St. Dom’s for third in the team competition.

Spruce Mountain’s 4×100 relay squad of Kayla Meserve, Kaylyn Walker, Rachel Calden and Erin Gats won that title.

Robbie Pallozzi of St. Dom’s won the boys’ javelin in only his second year since switching to track from baseball. Winthrop’s Zach Nadeau showed the way in shot put.

In addition to Monmouth’s 4×400 and 4×800 relay victories, Houston, one year removed from double knee surgery that cost him an entire sophomore season of sports, out-kicked Fitzgerald in the 4oo.

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