Faced with a one-point deficit heading into the final event, the Washington University men’s track-and-field team had little margin for error if it hoped to repeat as indoor conference champion.

And by the narrowest of margins, the 1,600-meter relay team delivered in dramatic fashion and won by less than a second over the University of Chicago to secure a one-point conference championship victory at the University Athletic Association Indoor Championships on Sunday in Chicago.

“[My mentality] was just to get ready to run. It’s all come down to this, your team is relying on you, just run as fast as you can because there’s nothing left to run after,” junior James Fitzhugh said.

The relay team consisting of Fitzhugh, juniors Alex Bastian and Britt Henderson, and senior Brendan Stone pulled out the victory by 0.85 seconds knowing that the team was counting on it.

“It’s what track is all about when you get to your big meet of the year and everything comes down to the last event. You just know that you’ve been training with these guys the whole year and they have your back. We knew that we could do it and we just gave it our all,” Fitzhugh said.

Meanwhile, the women’s team (131 points) finished second behind only UChicago (154) to improve upon its third-place performance last season.

“We knew that it was going to be hard to beat Chicago just because they have a really strong team and they have people in a lot of different events,” senior Lucy Cheadle said. “We just wanted to give it a really good fight and make it a close battle, and I think we got a lot closer to them than we were supposed to on paper.”

For a women’s team that won eight total conference titles, sophomore Daisy Ogede stole the headlines for the Bears by winning four of them, three of which were individual triumphs. In the 60-meter races, Ogede raced to a UAA-record time of 7.77 seconds to win the sprint and then posted a career-best time of 9.10 to place first in the hurdles.

Ogede also won the 200-meter race (25.73 seconds) before teaming up with junior Emily Warner, sophomore Rebecca Ridderhoff and sophomore Kelli Hancock to win the 4×400 relay in UAA record time (3:54.49).

Cheadle concluded her successful career in the conference championships by winning two more events. For the third consecutive season, Cheadle won the 3,000-meter race with a time of 10:00.15, and for the second time in her career, she raced to first in the 5,000 by posting a time of 17:35.91 to win by almost 10 seconds over the runner-up.

In the women’s pole vault, senior Claire Simons cleared a height of 3.45 meters to win the first UAA title of her career after finishing as the runner-up last year. To round out all the team’s event winners, Warner captured first place in the 800 with a time of 2:14.76.

“There were so many great individual performances. I mean, Daisy [Ogede] basically scored 40 points, which is insane, but everybody did a really good job of handling setbacks and putting it behind them. I think that was the key to being able to score as many points as we did,” Cheadle said.

Other notable contributors on the men’s side included senior Nick Alaniva, who sprinted to a victory in the 60-meter dash in 7.05 seconds, and junior Joey Pasque, who made his first conference championship meet memorable by winning the high jump with a clearance of 1.96 meters.

Although the men’s team didn’t win as many events, the Bears seized their fifth UAA title in six seasons with strong performances across the board. Senior Troy Makous and freshman Jacob Rother finished second and fourth, respectively, in the pole vault. Meanwhile, sophomore Mike Sullivan placed second in the mile while senior Zach Lonneman tossed a career-best 14.25 meters in the shot put to garner third place.

During a time when many students will travel south for spring break, the Bears will head up north to compete in the Pointer Qualifier in Stevens Point, Wis., next weekend in the team’s final tuneup before the NCAA Indoor Championships on March 13 and 14.