It didn't, but boy, was it close.With 83 points, Shelbyville finished one point behind Yorktown and two behind Pendleton Heights. Greenfield-Central won the meet with 130 points while Mount Vernon was runner-up with 112.

"We knew it was going to be tough," said Shelbyville girls track coach Dan Theobald. "We had a shot going in. We knew we had a shot. Looking back, we had a shot but for us to win, we had to have a perfect night. We had to meet expectations and exceed expectations."Shelbyville won three events on the night. The 3,200-meter relay team broke the meet record, Erin Diemer took first in the pole vault and Meghan Baker won the shot put.

The relay team of junior Gladys Chavez, sophomore Cora Reinhart and seniors Alexa Davis and Blayre Scott set a new HHC meet record, finishing in nine minutes, 54.45 seconds, which also broke the school record they set earlier this year. The previous conference record was set in 2002 by Delta (9:56.76).

Three of the four ran their best split of the year, according to Theobald."That's why they got the result they did," he said.Diemer won the pole vault with a 10 foot, six-inch effort. That was three inches better than New Palestine's Erin Trimpe. Shelbyville also picked up points from junior Kennedy Weaver, who came in fifth.Baker won the shot put with a throw of 35-7. That was nearly a foot better than runner-up Lillie Cain of New Palestine. Senior Betsy Suarez Ramos came in seventh.Two more highlights came in the 400 and 400 relay.

Davis led halfway through the 400 but faded to third. She recovered to get back to second in the final 100, where she held off Yorktown's A'Drean Howard-Anderson.The 400 relay of Diemer, freshman Lauren Pike, sophomore Alexis Tackett and junior Tori Hampton also itself in a close race. The quartet edged out Yorktown by .33 seconds, finishing in 52.40."That was an area we exceeded expectation," Theobald said. "We had tweaked our lineup a little bit couple weeks ago and ended up switching our order and that helped us run the best time of the year."

There were other events, however, that the Golden Bears needed to see better performances.Baker and Suarez Ramos were seeded fourth and sixth, respectively, in the discus. Baker finished eighth, while Suarez Ramos dropped out of the scoring, finishing in 10th.Both Tackett and junior Katie Schwering advanced to the finals in the long jump. Schwering exceeded her seeding, jumping from eighth to sixth. Tackett dropped from where she was seeded, from fifth to seventh. Chavez dropped from her seeding in the 800, finishing fourth. Scott also scored in the event, coming in sixth.

"There were some areas where we met expectations, a couple where we did exceed, but there were some areas we faltered a little bit," Theobald said. "We have a couple areas where we've struggled all year where we couldn't score points, really put a hurt on us."Those would be the 100 hurdles, where freshman Zaria Martin and Paige Espinda were 13th and 14th, and the high jump, where Schwering gave the best performance on the team, tying for 10th.

Tackett and Hampton moved up from their seedings in the 100. Tackett, seeded 12th, finished ninth, one spot away from scoring, and Hampton, seeded 11th, moved up to 10th.Schwering also moved up in the 300 hurdles, finishing eighth.