The Summit and Caldera 4x400-meter relay teams stand on the podium at the state track and field championships Saturday evening at Hayward Field in Eugene. (Brian Rathbone/The Bulletin)

EUGENE – Senior Jaymi Dickinson and junior Ava Kailey knew all too well that any team could run the race of their lives and win a state title in the 4×400-meter relay. They lived through it a year ago.

Last year, the Caldera 4×400-relay team came out of nowhere to win the Class 5A title.

“You always wonder getting out on the track if that is going to be the same case here,” said senior anchor Jaymi Dickinson. “Where someone comes in and blows it out of the water and beats us. We didn’t want that to happen. Deep down we were all like, ‘We want to win. We are the best out here and we want to win.’”

With a time of 3 minutes, 53.62 seconds at Hayward Field on Saturday, the Wolfpack 4×400 relay team wasn’t just the fastest team in the race, but the fastest in any classification all year. The team included Dickinson, junior Ava Kailey and freshmen Zadie Boyd and Ayleen Buenrostro.

Dickinson and Kailey were the returners from last year’s winning relay team, and Boyd and Buenrostro were the newcomers who rose to the challenge of delivering a consecutive title.

The Wolfpack cleanly exchanged the baton from Buenrostro to Kailey to Boyd to Dickinson without a hiccup and led for nearly the entire race. The final two laps, with Boyd running the 400 in 57.34 seconds and Dickinson in 56.81, were two of the three fastest legs any runner had run in the race.