HOT SPRINGS -- Vengeance belonged to Bentonville High's girls Friday afternoon.

The Lady Tigers, who lost the 6A-West Conference title last week because of a tiebreaker, found sweet redemption when they claimed the Class 6A state championship in a close decision over a sloppy Oaklawn Park course. Bentonville finished with 37 points while Rogers High -- the team that nipped the Lady Tigers in the conference meet -- finished second with 40 points.

"You never know what happens at a state meet," Bentonville coach Randy Ramaker said. "There's always craziness that happens at this meet. I didn't know it was going to be as muddy as it was, but for me, it's a day everybody needs to run in."

This year's oddity became a slower runner who made a premature turn down the final stretch and was the fourth runner to cross the finish line. The error caused the scoring to appear that Bentonville and Rogers had finished in a tie again -- the same thing that happened at the 6A-West meet.

Once the mistake was found and adjustments were made, it proved to be in Bentonville's favor because four Lady Tigers runners moved up in the standings and provided the margin of victory while Rogers only had three move up. It allowed Bentonville to have four runners among the top 10 finishers.

"I was really happy with our kids sticking it up there," Ramaker said. "It took all five of them to win this, even though Rogers had a runner that probably didn't run her best. Tori Willis fell in the mud, then finished the race, and every one of those kids counted.

"They pushed hard, and they knew what was on the line. We tied at conference, and our girls weren't happy with that. I wasn't happy with that, but those things happen in life. Our girls rose up and didn't accept defeat."

Rogers' Ali Nachtigal successfully defended her state individual title as the sophomore covered the 5,000-meter course was 19 minutes, 26.4 seconds. Bentonville's Lainey Quandt was next at 19:42.3, while Rogers' Anna Jeffcoat -- last week's conference champion -- was third.

The three runners were close until the final half-mile, when Nachtigal picked up the pace and eventually pulled away with a strong finish.

"It's still so awesome to do this and help my team out to the best of my abilities," Nachtigal said. "The sloppy conditions were just part of the race course. There are some races where you just have to go out and run. The Chile Pepper was definitely worse than this."
