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St. Joseph Christian's Alexa Taff, center, wins the preliminary round of the girls 100-meter dash race at the district track meet on Saturday.

Alexa Taff’s facial expressions told the story of triumph and perseverance Saturday at the Class 1 District 7 track meet.

A smile creased the St. Joseph Christian freshman’s lips as coach John Chavez whispered her 100-meter dash time to her: 12.71, good enough for a school record.

That same fresh face carried a furrowed brow about an hour later, at the end of her victory in the 400.

“That hurt,” she mouthed to her father, Dale.

But Taff didn’t let a sprained foot bother her, winning every event she entered and helping the Lions to the team title with 118 points and a 15-point margin over Lone Jack. She breezed to victory in the 200, outsprinting Emma Hill of King City with a 26.72 clocking and called it a day, taking the opportunity to ice down her foot.

“We thought she may not even be able to run today, but, gosh,” Chavez said. “Obviously, it didn’t slow her down too much.”

The veteran track coach said Taff, whose father ran track for Chavez at Central years earlier, did a good job of overcoming the pain.

“You just have to block that out of your head and just go for it, and that’s what she’d done,” Chavez said. “She’s a hard-working girl, and I like the fact that she won’t give up.”

The district meet was grueling for Taff, who ran a total of six races through the day, counting preliminaries. That number will be cut to four Saturday when she and the rest of the qualifiers travel to Albany for the sectional meet. The top four finishers in each event advance to the sectional meet for the opportunity to qualify for the Class 1 state championship on May 22 and 23 in Jefferson City.

“I think she’ll be ready (for the sectional),” Chavez. “This will give her one more week to kind of come around and be a little stronger and not worry about that foot.”

The Lions boasted a second multiple-event winner in Hannah Olson, who won the 1,500 and 3,200. As the only entrant in the girls’ pole vault, she won the first-place medal in that event, as well.

While Taff and Olson starred for the Lions girls, a balanced Lone Jack team ran away with the boys title with 115 points. Polo’s boys finished second with 101 points, and South Holt utilized a strong showing in the field events to take third with 82 points, edging out DeKalb (77).

“We’re good in the field events; we’ve just got to get some more horses to run,” South Holt coach John Casey said.

But Casey’s squad was loaded with field event performers, including Garrett Derr, who swept the throwing events.

Derr threw 144-0 in the discus, not far off the school record he established earlier this season, and his winning shot put of 44-9 1/2 was nearly 4 feet longer than the second-place throw of DeKalb’s Dustin Zabel.

“That was a good one,” Casey said of Derr’s throw. “Garrett has been throwing good all year for us.”

The Knights also got a pole vault victory from Donny Sipes (11-9), who took second in the high jump.

Kevin Beaubien dominated the sprints to help Lone Jack’s cause. The senior, who will play football for Missouri Valley next fall, won the 100 in 11.45, the 200 in 23.08 and the 400 in 51.94.

Polo got a big boost from the hurdles events, where Dalton Rardon won the 110 hurdles in 16.73 and finished second to Christian’s Matt Nelson in the 300-meter event. Rardon also ran a leg on the Panthers’ winning 4x400 team, which had an outside shot to give Polo the team title. But Lone Jack, with Beaubien running the opening leg, finished a close second to clinch the championship.