GREENSBORO - While Knightdale's boys and Wakefield's girls rolled to convincing victories at the 4-A state track and field championships Saturday at North Carolina A&T University, several area runners also stood out.

Apex's girls finished third overall, picking up a state championship from Alexis Murphy in the 200-meter (24.57 seconds).

The only other girls state champions from the Tri-Nine Conference were Cary's seniors-only 4-by-800 relay team that shattered the state record by almost five seconds at 9:06.17.

The state championship win "does feel different; we'd never broken 9:10 before and that's great," Deanna Foshee said. "Last year we were 12 seconds slower, that's three seconds per leg, which is really a lot."

It's the fourth state championship together for Deanna Foshee, Sheridan Jordan, Jenna Christensen and Erin Foshee. The group averaged 2:16.5 per 800.

"We've worked a lot on pacing by ourselves for our 800 (legs)," Jordan said. "We knew this would be a lot like the regional race last week so we'd have to do it (pace ourselves) again."

The quartet will have just one more meet to race together - their final national meet.

"It'll be nice to get to nationals and have somebody to run with," Christensen said.

On the boys side, eighth-place Fuquay-Varina had the highest team finish of any Tri-Nine team.

The league had two state champions: Holly Springs long jumper Josh McClam (24-2) and Green Hope pole vaulter John Mangum (15-0).

"Coach told me to just make sure I got my steps right and be exact so I could get more power in my jumps," McClam said. "My first jump usually sets the trend. I went 22-6 today in my first jump and just built on that from there."