Despite trailing at the end of the field events, both Riverfield’s boys and girls track teams rallied in the running events to get past host ACCS Wednesday afternoon at the MPSA District 4-AA Varsity Track Meet.

Riverfield’s boys won the district championship with a team total of an even 100 points while ACCS was second with 78 points and Prairie View Academy was a distant third with 50 points.

“It feels good,” Riverfield varsity boys track coach Mike Rainwater said. “They deserve all the credit. I’m real fortunate to have a good group of young kids. I had a couple of freshmen come in and help us out today. They deserve what they’ve gotten.”

Riverfield’s boys team got off to a tough start after ACCS’s Matthew Guedon and Lee Swinny finished 1-2 in the pole vault. The Raiders were 10 points in the hole right off the bat.

But led by Hunter Adcock, Jared King, James Doughty and Kyle King, the Raiders took the lead during the running events and never looked back. Three of Riverfield’s four relay teams finished in first place.

For ACCS, Daniel Guedon won the 1600-meter run, Dillon Johnson won the 300-meter hurdles, John Carl Johnson won the shot put, Slick Frank won the discus, Duncan Guedon took first in the high jump, and its 3200-meter relay team held off Prairie View.

“When JV season is over, you can move up your faster JV kids to varsity,” ACCS track coach Warren Whitaker said. “We had at least 90 percent JV. Riverfield’s got more varsity kids involved than we do. I’m plenty satisfied. They’ve given it what they had. If they (boys and girls) stay with the track program, we’ll be hard to beat next year because we’ve got a lot of young talent.”

Riverfield’s girls team continued nearly a decade of dominance by winning the district title with a total of 103 points, with ACCS finishing second with 80 points and Prairie View third with 29 points.

Just like their male counterparts, the Lady Raiders were behind after the field events, only to come from behind in the running events to take the district championship. And they won all three of the relay races and got strong individual performances from Skylar Burns, Emma McHenry, Lauren Noble and Claudia Williams.

“The girls did well,” Riverfield varsity girls track coach Cleo Head said. “This is like eight or nine years in a row. They hate losing. We had to rely heavily on our running. They came out and ran hard. ACCS has got some good girls who can run.”

All three of ACCS’s relay teams finished second behind Riverfield and got first-place finishes from Ashley Murray in the 100-meter hurdles, Katherine Wedgeworth in the 100-meter dash, Kaitlyn O’Quinn in the 3200-meter run and Ariana DeLaSalle in the high jump.

The top four finishers in every event will compete at the Class AA South State Track Meet next week at Silliman next week. The field events will take place next Wednesday and the running events will be next Saturday.

This was also the third track meet to take place at ACCS in a span of six days.

“It’s been a marathon for me,” Whitaker said. “A lot of paperwork. A lot of field work. But I’ve had a lot of help. You can’t run a track meet without a lot of help. We’ve been blessed with some beautiful weather, both Monday and today.”