Old Mill coach Mike Marcus wasn't ashamed to say that he was feeling "a little emotional" while listening to the public address announcer read off the final team results at yesterday's Class 4A State Indoor Track and Field Championships at the 5th Regiment Armory.
"There's an old track creed," said Marcus, "and it says, 'If you can't get first, get second, if you can't get second, get third.' "
Old Mill did both.
The Patriots girls team scored 44 1/2 points to finish second behind Eleanor Roosevelt (72) while Old Mill's boys team, which was going for its fourth straight state crown, tallied 42 points and had to settle for a tie for third with North County.
Roosevelt swept the team titles, its boys team scoring 54 points to hold off runner-up Perry Hall (44).
"On the boys side, we had a shot at it, but we didn't pick up any points when we had to," said Marcus, whose team had not been denied a team title at states since 1990.
"We got off OK but then it just kept going downhill for us. It was just one of those days."
Junior Richard Queen picked up 16 points for the Pats by winning the boys 55-meter -- (6.58 seconds) and taking third in the 55 hurdles.
Martise Moore and Kristin Wimbrow emerged as the only individual state champs on Old Mill's girls team, winning the 55 hurdles and high jump, respectively.
Cathy Porter, the defending indoor state champion in the shot put, finished second, as did teammate Delvell Johnson in the boys high jump.
Annapolis senior Kristen Nicolini set a meet record in the girls 800 run and ran the anchor leg of Panthers' 3,200 relay team that fell one-tenth of a second shy of the record it established at last year's state meet.
Nicolini's time of 2:14.5 in the 800 eclipsed the standard of 2:17.0 set a day earlier by Walter Johnson's Sally Glynn.
It also broke the 4A record established by Perry Hall's Krissy Jost in 1993 -- Jost's final year at Queen Anne's.
Nicolini, Lisa Jewell, Alison Ross and Becky Morris won the two-mile relay in 9:50.6.
That narrowly missed the record that Nicolini and Ross helped set last year with Susan deWolff and Lila Dodge passing them the baton.
Topper Ellis led North County's boys team to what will go down as a moral victory for the Knights. The senior claimed second in the 500 and third in the 300, before teaming up with Jon Pinkocz, Toney Fowlkes and Danny Zavorka to win the 1,600 relay in 3:33.1.
Arundel's Christy Nichols placed second behind Jost in the 3,200 and Jim Woods finished fifth for the Wildcats in the boys 800 run.
Ryan Stevens of Chesapeake earned a state title in the boys 1,600 run and had enough energy left to finish as runner-up in the 3,200.
"I was hoping to win the mile and when I did that, I figured I'll do whatever I can in the two-mile," said Stevens.
"There were bunch of guys who could have come out and won it, it just depends on who has the good day and I knew if I had a good day I could win. I just tried to sit back, hang onto their tail, and then with a lap and a quarter left I tried to outkick them and I did."