COLUMBUS — The stars may have aligned for Lexington over the weekend, but don’t sell these Minutemen short.
The way Denise Benson sees it, fortune favors the prepared.
Lex followed Friday’s state championship in the 4×800 relay with a record-setting Saturday and rode it to a runner-up finish in the Division I team standings during the final day of the state track and field championships at Ohio State’s Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium.
The Minutemen finished with 39 points. Wayne won with 60 points.
It was Lexington’s best finish since taking runner-up honors in Division II in 2016.
“These young men have put the work in,” said Benson, the architect of Lexington’s other-worldly distance program. “Talent gets you so far. If you put hard work with talent, look out. That’s what you saw today.
“You saw talent that worked hard and you can’t discount chemistry. They did this for each other.”
The 4×800 relay team of Chance Basilone, Nathan Reed, Will Perkins and Latrell Hughes set the tone Friday by winning the state title in a school-record 7:37.35.
Perkins kept the party going Saturday by finishing fourth in the 400 in a school-record 47.354.
Hughes followed by outsprinting a loaded field to win the 800 in a school-record 1:51.00.
“I’m grateful. I’m very blessed,” Hughes said. “I knew coming out of that four-by-eight that I had a really good shot to win the 800. I just kept that positive mindset.”
Basilone followed with a fourth-place finish in the 3,200, finishing in a school-record 9:01.51. He was in ninth place with 200 meters to go before finding an opening to work through traffic.
“It was insane,” said Basilone, who will run for Ohio State next year. “I got boxed in and I couldn’t get out. With like 350 (meters) to go, I finally got out and I just took off. I left it all out there.”
Lexington sealed its runner-up finish with a second in the 4×400. The team of Dantrell Hughes, Perkins, Bryston Hess and Latrell Hughes finished in 3:14.50.
“It’s a loaded field in Division I. There are a lot of good schools out there, but we feel like we’re pretty good, too,” Lexington coach Mike Moore said. “Our goal today was to just set school records and see where that puts us.
“It was a perfect weekend and it was because the kids bought in the entire time. It was beautiful.”
