PEARL – All the Vicksburg Missy Gators needed to do to win a state championship on Saturday was beat Natchez in the last race of the day.

The two teams were tied with 91 points apiece at the Class 5A girls state track meet, with no one else even close. The winner of their duel in the 4-by-400 meter relay would determine which team hoisted the championship trophy and which one went home crying.

As Natchez’s Ki’Ara Jones turned a small lead into a big one on the anchor leg, and the green uniform of Vicksburg’s Kendra Sims grew increasingly distant, it quickly became apparent that the Missy Gators would be the ones weeping.

Jones carried Natchez to a second-place finish in the final relay, eight seconds ahead of the Missy Gators, to give the Lady Bulldogs a 95-91 edge over Vicksburg in the team standings. It was the fourth straight state title for Natchez.

The ending ruined a day in which the Missy Gators captured four gold medals, and a season in which the only meet they lost was the one that counted most.

“We put a lot of hours into this and set this goal last year,” said Vicksburg coach Deborah L. Brown, whose team was also the runnerup to Natchez last year. “We came so close to obtaining our goal. It was the little miscues that got us to come up short.”

The miscues came early in the day, when Vicksburg posted eighth-place finishes in the 1,600-meter run and 400-meter dash, and a seventh-place effort in the high jump. The missed points from even a middle-of-the-pack performance in those events came back to haunt Vicksburg later.

“When we got those seventh- and eighth-places, I knew it was going to be a hard pill to swallow,” Brown said. “But I never doubted my girls.”

That’s because the Missy Gators dominated most of the other events they were in.

Sophomore Courtney Prentiss repeated as the state champion in the 100- and 200-meter dashes- winning with times of 12.29 seconds and 25.47 seconds, respectively – and anchored the winning 4-by-100 and 4-by-200 meter relays. In the 4-by-200, she finished nearly 25 yards ahead of the nearest challenger.

Prentiss overcame a bad start to win the 100 meters. She stumbled out of the blocks, but simply outran the rest of the field, beating second-place finisher Wendy Coleman of Tupelo by about 10 feet.

“My block was loose,” Prentiss said. “I just ran my hardest. I knew I had a title to defend, so I had to run.”

Erica Woodson and Stephanie Wright later gave the Missy Gators a boost by finishing second and third in the 300-meter hurdles. Woodson also finished second in the 100-meter hurdles and was part of the 4-by-100 relay team, while Wright and Sims were on both winning relay teams. Rachel Jenkins was also on the 4-by-200 relay.

In the end, though, it was Jones that made the difference. She won the 400-meter dash and the high jump, and was second to Prentiss in the 200. Natchez coach Larry Wesley took Jones out of her usual spot in the 4-by-200 and moved her to the 4-by-400 relay, and the switch paid off with a state title.

“I enjoyed this victory more than any other victory I enjoyed in my life,” Wesley said. “All season I’ve been getting beat by one or two points. But I knew at the state meet, they’d come through.”

While the Missy Gators were disappointed with their second-place finish, the Warren Central boys were elated with theirs.

Fred Payne won the 100 meters, and teamed with Larry Warner and Marquel Sims on two winning relays, to help the Vikings amass 52 total points. That was well behind Brandon, which won the Class 5A boys’ title with 78 points, but still impressive considering WC only had six athletes in the meet.

“I knew we were going to do well in the events we were in, but to finish this strong is unexpected,” said WC coach Larry Tyrone, whose team only competed in seven of the 17 events.

Skylar Wilson helped WC win the 4-by-200 relay and Donald Neal teamed with the Vikings’ speedy trio to win the 4-by-100. Payne also finished second in the triple jump and Warner was second in the high jump.

It was the running of Payne, though, that caught everyone’s eye.

He won the 100 meters with a time of 10.96, then ran a strong anchor leg to carry the 4-by-200 team to victory. A bad exchange had put the Vikings behind, but Payne went from fifth to first and won by a half-second over Starkville’s anchor man.

Payne capped the day by anchoring the 4-by-100 relay team, which won in 42.37 seconds.

“I wanted to go home with four golds. But my mama will be proud with three golds and one silver,” Payne said.

The Vicksburg Gators’ day was considerably less rosy than their crosstown rivals.

The VHS boys came into the meet with an outside shot at a state title, but instead plummeted to eighth in the team standings. Other than Jerel Hill’s second-place effort in the 200 meters, Vicksburg did not have a finish better than fourth all day.

Even Hill’s run was disappointing. The senior was leading the race with 50 meters to go when his legs started to cramp. He gave it a valiant effort on the final stretch, but was edged by Ocean Springs’ Deandre Brown.

“My legs went out,” said Hill, who finished the race in 22.67 seconds, two-tenths of a second behind Brown. “They just locked up, cramped up. I thought I had it.”