The state indoor track meet came down to the wire on Saturday at the Providence Career and Technical Academy between frontrunners Hendricken, La Salle and Central.

However, the Hawks’ depth carried them to their first indoor title in four years, outlasting the Knights (75 points) and Rams (69 points) with a total of 81 points, snapping La Salle’s run of three consecutive championships.

Central dominated the sprinting events, and La Salle’s D.J. Principe kept his team in contention by winning the 1,000, 1,500 and 3,000.

Hendricken, on the other hand, put forth a more balanced performance. It won the first event of the day, the 4x800 relay, when Dylan Manning, Jordan Dagrin, Robert Merlino and Harry Antone outpaced the field to give Hendricken an early edge.

Hawks’ senior Michael Bittner was the only other first-place finisher for the eventual champs, as he took down the state crown in the high jump with a leap of six feet, four inches.

Overall, Hendricken didn’t overwhelm the field with golds, but it was able to place in 11 of 14 events to hold off Central and La Salle, who pushed the Hawks in the points column until the very end.

“It feels real good,” Hendricken head coach Jim Doyle said following the victory. “I’m happy for the guys who’ve been focused all year. We constantly talk about team, it’s not two or three guys, it’s an entire team. That’s exactly what we had here today.”

After the first-place performances by the 4x800 relay team and Bittner, the Hawks posted five runner-up finishes.

Football star Kwity Paye grabbed a spot on the podium with a second-place toss in the shot put, while Ethan Famiano grabbed silver in the 55-meter hurdles, the team of Famiano, Russell White, Ethan Pezzullo and Desmond Bernal placed second in the 4x200, Joseph Rivera Santos earned runner-up in the long jump and the 4x400 relay quartet of Bernal, Duwuan Edwards, Merlino and Antone clinched the title in the meet’s last event by posting a second-place finish.

Going into the 4x400, Hendricken held a six-point lead over La Salle, with Central not far behind, but the Hawks’ runner-up performance was enough to hold off their two stiffest competitors.

“It’s an unbelievable grind,” Doyle said of the ups and downs of the day. “You take it one event at a time – we thought we’d be second in the 4x800 and we won. Our 4x200 came up with a big second place. We had some disappointments in the 3,000, and we had to work through that. We had some heroics in the high jump with Bittner winning the high jump, so that was big. And then we scored big in the long jump, so those are the kind of things that win state championships.”

Outside of the first- and second-place postings, Santos also earned third in the 55-meter hurdles, Dagrin took fifth and sixth, respectively, in the 1,000 and 1,500, Antone placed third in the 600, Xavier Truss placed sixth in the shot put and Sean Meehan added an additional two points with his effort in the 3,000.

When all was said and done, the Hawks were raising their first indoor title trophy since 2013 after a hard-fought victory.

“The guys knew what they had to do today,” Doyle said. “We knew coming in that it was going to be a tough meet and it was going to be a toss up. But, we felt that if we did our job, we could possibly win it, and that’s what we told them all week.”

The win was even more impressive because Hendricken had its back against the wall more than halfway through the meet. With eight events in the books, La Salle held a seven-point cushion atop the points standings, but the Hawks were able to persevere and make up ground down the stretch.

“These guys just never gave up, that’s why I’m so proud of them,” Doyle said. “They were just unbelievable throughout the entire meet.”