Years from now when people pore over photos from the 2015 state cross-country championships, they may have a hard time getting a clear picture of the day's proceedings.
"Is my face dirty?" West High sophomore Molly Gellert said before stepping in front of a TV camera for an interview after her victory in the Class 4A girls race.
Of course it was. Everyone who raced at Bartlett High on Saturday was dirty.
Last week's snow, now melted, turned trails into goo and the subsequent rain left pools of water on the course. Everywhere you looked, coaches and parents were telling kids to turn their backs to cameras and cell phones so they could capture images of the glorious mess.
But muddy legs and muddy faces were just part of the story.
The day saw the end of the longest winning streak in Alaska cross-country history. And it saw the end of one of the sport's longest droughts.
A nearly decade-long reign ended for the Grace Christian boys, whose string of Class 1-2-3A state championships stopped at nine.
And a wait that dates back to 1973 – the start of official state championships in Alaska -- ended for the West High boys, who claimed their first state title with a decisive victory in the Class 4A competition.
"Oldest school in the district, and now we're champions," said Brycen Lynch, one of four West runners who finished in the top 20.
It was a day filled with firsts. The Sitka boys won their first title, topping Homer and Grace Christian in the 3A team competition. The Kenai Central girls won their first state title, edging second-place West Valley and third-place Chugiak in Class 4A girls competition, which produced the closest team battle.
And Chugiak senior Ty Jordan finally tasted victory in the final race of the season, winning the Class 4A boys title after placing third last year and second the year before. Gellert was a first-time winner too.
Defending their titles were Briahna Gerlach of Glennallen, who won the Class 3A girls race for the third straight time, and Kaleb Korta of Galena, who won the Class 3A boys race for the second straight time.
The only team to repeat as champion was the Homer Mariners, who made it two in a row in the Class 3A girls race.
Class 4A boys
Old school met homeschool this year at West, and the combination proved fortuitous.
Anchorage's oldest school, founded in 1953, made history with the help of a home-schooled sophomore who joined the team after an encouraging training run.
"I ran a practice 5-K with a workout group and got a pretty good time, so I thought, 'Why don't I go out for cross country?' '' said Declan Dammeyer, whose main sport is baseball.
In a single season Dammeyer shaved three minutes off his 5-kilometer time. On Saturday he finished with a personal-record time of 16 minutes, 41 seconds to grab 12th place, which made him West's No. 2 runner, behind third-place Finn Walker.
Dammeyer wasn't even on the West team that won last week's Cook Inlet Conference championship. He ran in the JV race, and won big.
"I kept PR'ing every time," Dammeyer said of his rookie season. "My first race I ran 19:30, then 18:50, then 17-something. My last race was 16:54 and I realized I had a chance at making varsity. I worked really hard for that varsity spot."
Walker led the Eagles in 16:10. Danmeyer, 17th-place Lynch, 18th-place Luke Jager and 24th-place Tristan Wiese gave West 64 team points for a comfortable winning margin. South eked out second place by beating defending champion Kodiak, 93-96.
"West has never won the boys (championship) and the team set out from the start with that goal," assistant coach Dylan Peterson said. "They were the state runner-up the past two years, so they were hungry. They were tired of getting second."
The Eagles weren't the only guys hungry for a win.
Chugiak's Jordan, a contender but never a champion, was salivating for victory in his final race. He got it in 15:48, four seconds ahead of Service sophomore Gus Schumacher.
Walker, who finished in 16:10, led the race until Schumacher made a move around the halfway point. Jordan followed.
"I feel so happy, 'cause I won regions three times but I never won this," Jordan said. "Now, finally, I have it."
Class 4A girls
Remember Allie Ostrander?
Ostrander was a three-time champion for Kenai Central and could very well wind up as Alaska's finest female runner. The pride of the Peninsula is a freshman in college now, but she made an impact all the same Saturday.
"She's been sending us texts and motivating us," Kenai sophomore Riana Boonstra said.
Boonstra finished second in the 4A girls race to help the Kardinals win their first girls' championship with 60 points, narrowly beating West Valley (65) and Chugiak (68).
Three other Kenai girls joined Boonstra in the top 11 -- Jaycie Calvert and Ithaca Bergholtz placed fifth and sixth, respectively, and Addison Gibson was 11th.
A lead pack of six runners stuck together for more than half the race. Gellert and Boonstra opened a gap around three kilometers and Gellert broke away at the 4-K mark and won in 18:58, six seconds ahead of Boonstra and 17 seconds ahead of Morgan Lash of South, who came from behind to beat Gellert at last week's CIC championships.
"I learned from the last race and decided I was gonna stick back and conserve myself for the finish," Gellert said. "I've never run with a pack of six all going that fast. It was really fun, and I think it helped me pace myself."
Though she is only a sophomore, Gellert knew enough recent history to sense a different dynamic at the start of Saturday's race.
"Going into a race with Allie, it was always a race for second place," she said. "This year it was exciting. It was like, who wants it most?
"… It's exciting to be the next one."
Class 3A boys
Sometimes Kaleb Korta misses the days when no one knew who he was.
The Galena runner used to be able to come to big meets and surprise people. Now guys are trying to surprise him.
Korta had to fend off challenges from Seward's Hunter Kratz and from his own teammate, sophomore Jacob Moos, to win his second straight state title.
He wound up beating Kratz by 10 seconds and Moos by 21 with a 16:00, but he didn't shed the competition until the final hill.
"I knew I'd have a big target on my back," Korta said. "I miss being an underdog sometimes."
The Grizzlies of Grace Christian know about running with targets on their back. They've been the team to beat for the last nine years, but they had an idea coming into Saturday that their streak was endangered.
If the Grizzlies felt glum about the end of their reign, they didn't show it. They smiled as they posed playfully for team photos after the race.
"We talked about it before," coach Tara Edwards said. "We talked about doing what we can control: give your very, very best effort and offer it up to God.
"They did exactly what we asked them to do, and at the end they responded with grace."
This time it was Sitka that celebrated a championship, one the Wolves captured by placing four runners in the top 12, a group led by fourth-place Colin Baciocco.
A year ago, Sitka placed fifth, but coach Shasta Smith said she knew then the Wolves could win it all this year.
"We've had our eye on this a long time," she said. "We went home and talked about it – what it would take to run year-round, that it takes more than one or two runners to commit to year-round running.
"We looked at the results really closely and saw where time-cuts could be made, and we speculated."
Then the Wolves went out and did it.
Class 3A girls
It almost looked like mud, but upon closer inspection the smudge on Briahna Gerlach's left shoulder came from a Sharpie:
#BGCDBT
It stands for "Big girls can do big things," and it was inspired in part by the remark of an opponent who Gerlach passed at a race earlier this year.
"I was going by these two tiny girls and one of them said, 'Go, big girl!' So we joked about being big runners," Gerlach said.
Gerlach is a big runner, and not just because she's maybe a little taller than many.
By winning her third state title in her junior season, she's in position to do something only two other Alaskans have done – win four state titles. Only Kristi Klinnert of Kodiak and Emily Ransom of Seward have done that.
Though Elizabeth Balsan of Anchorage Christian gave her a scare midway through the race, Gerlach cruised to victory in 19:04, 34 seconds ahead of Balsan.
In third place, two seconds behind Balsan, was Megan Pitzman, who led Homer to its second straight state championship.
All seven of the Mariners placed in the top 22. They had three in the top 10, a group that included seventh-place Alex Moseley and eighth-place Audrey Rosencrans.
The Mariners wore blue and green face paint, and each had a picture of a mariner's wheel drawn on her right thigh, which is apparently about as crazy as this group gets.
"We're pretty low-key," Moseley said. "We're pretty modest people."
Which is why the Mariners had no plans to rush home to join the school's homecoming festivities Saturday.
"We're gonna go home and sleep," one of them said.
"I'm going shopping," said another.
But first, the Mariners had to take care of one final piece of business at Bartlett.
"C'mon over here," a proud parent told the girls. "I wanna do a mud-leg picture."
Reach Beth Bragg at bbragg@alaskadispatch.com