Wichita ? Apparently the only way to prevent Baldwin High senior Heather Garcia from placing first is by bumping her out of her race pace.

“I guess so,” Garcia said. “It would be nice to maybe run a clean race. I don’t know. But that’s OK. Nothing I can do about it now.”

Garcia was looking to win her fourth gold medal in as many events in Class 4A state, but at the beginning of the final lap of the 800-meter run, El Dorado’s Laura Nightengale bumped Garcia, who was attempting to pass the eventual winner.

“I took off hard and she didn’t like it I guess and I guess I was a little too close to her liking so I got a little push and I backed off,” Garcia said. “But I was like, ‘Well, if you’re going to be like that, I’ll try as hard as I can to catch you.’ So I gave her everything I had.”

And everything was nearly enough.

Garcia came with 0.79 from catching Nightengale at the finish line and making it a perfect ending to her career at Baldwin.

“I was really off balance and she took off hard all of a sudden,” the Bulldogs senior said. “I was like, ‘OK, she’s gone. I’ve got to start going too.’ I had to mentally reconnect myself and be like, ‘OK, I’ve got to continue racing and just let that go.’ It wasn’t it my plan, but I just had to deal with it.”

The first-place finisher in the 3,200- and 1,600-meter runs added to her gold medal tally by anchoring the 3,200- meter relay team, which defeated second place Wamego by more than three seconds after coming in with a time of 9:41.09.

Wamego actually held onto the lead heading down the final stretch, but Garcia blazed past Beth Neilsen to claim her first gold medal in the 3,200-meter relay.

“I was so excited,” Garcia said. “I’ve never gotten to run in a race like that and it’s so cool to come from behind because it motivated me so much.

“I wanted to win for my girls, because they never get to experience the glory like I do. So I wanted to help them get this and it was really cool to be up on the podium with my friends.”