The Hillers celebrate after winning the D2 state title Wednesday. PHOTO/HHS ATHLETICS

Hopkinton High School boys indoor track coach Mike Donahue saw it coming three years ago. He saw the talent and depth of the then-freshman class and told the athletes they had the potential to do something special if they stuck with it and put in the work.

Three years later, those athletes delivered, winning the Division 2 state championship in thrilling fashion Wednesday night at The Track at New Balance in Brighton, edging Concord-Carlisle by a half-point, 69.5-69. It marked the program’s first state title in more than 20 years.

“They had their eyes on the prize from a very early time,” Donahue said. “As freshmen, they were the strongest group of freshmen we ever had. We saw that we had the building blocks, and we told them that. We said, ‘It’s on you, you have to do the work, and you have to recruit more athletes to join us.’ And they did, they brought in guys, and they took it seriously.

“As it started to come together this year, they proved to be exactly what we thought they could be. And that was because of them. It was the work they put in — and it was a lot of work that went into it. This is a group of guys that worked hard. They changed their bodies and went from boys to young men.”

Hopkinton was coming off wins in the Division 2 Relays (Jan. 18) and the Tri-Valley League Showcase (Jan. 31) and was projected as the third-best team in Division 2, behind Concord-Carlisle and Catholic Memorial.

Donahue didn’t have an issue with that, but Hopkinton had showcased its depth throughout the season.

“It’s an exceedingly balanced team, with strengths in a lot of different areas,” Donahue said. “We have hurdlers, jumpers, throwers, distance, middle distance — at the relay meet we scored in every relay but one. We didn’t have an event where we didn’t have a guy who could compete. We had a really balanced approach of all the teams who were competing.”

Hopkinton got off to a terrific start, garnering 20 points in the 55-meter hurdles as Harry Millar took first, Jacob Logan finished second and Braden Lu captured seventh.

“We were out in front of everybody from the beginning,” Donahue said. “We stayed in first place as a team almost throughout the meet.”

Sean Finnegan scored 16 points by himself, with second-place finishes in the mile and 2-mile. In the 300 meters, Ian Weilding took second and Iago Ferreira was third. Ryan Morin contributed a fourth-place finish in the shot put.

In the high jump, Mason Barros cleared 6 feet and tied for eighth, which was worth a half-point.

“He came over and was disappointed,” Donahue recalled. “He said he wanted to score more points for our team, but I said that was a tremendous performance. He’s only jumped 6 feet a few times.

“Then I turned to [athletic director] Ricky Andrade and said, ‘This meet is going to come down to a half-point.’ ”

Donahue was dead on.

“We kept on scoring points throughout the meet, but so was Concord-Carlisle,” Donahue said. “When they won the 4×800 relay, that put them 2 1/2 points ahead of us going into the 4×400.”

Heading into the 4×400, the meet’s final event, Donahue was confident his quartet of Ferreira, Weilding, Jason O’Connell and John Knutson would do well. But that wasn’t necessarily going to be enough. C-C raced in an earlier heat and won it with a time of 3 minutes, 31.97 seconds. Not only did Hopkinton have to beat that time, at least one other team needed to finish between Hopkinton and C-C in order for the Hillers to have enough points to win the meet.

“When they got first in their heat, I was like, ‘Good, this is way it should happen, we should have to perform well to win.’ But we also needed another team in our heat to run faster than Concord-Carlisle did,” Donahue said. “So there were a lot of factors going on, and it was going to come down to hundredths of a second.”

Midway through Hopkinton’s heat, Donahue was concerned, as the Hillers and their competitors seemed to be “lagging a little” — not a shock, considering many of the runners were in their third race of the evening.

Then a Bridgewater-Raynham runner used a burst of speed to pull ahead. In the process, the runners from Hopkinton and King Philip responded with their own bursts.

“When C-C ran a 3:31, I knew we could run that fast, but I didn’t know what our guys had left,” Donahue said. “Iago and Ian ran the 300 and the 4×200 really, really fast. How many lights-out races do you have in one day? Everybody was pretty taxed. I thought we could do it, but it also depends on how the race is run. That’s why the B-R kid — having that competition was tremendous.”

B-R went on to win the race, but Ferreira, running the anchor leg, held on for second. King Philip was close behind and finished 61 hundredths of a second better than C-C’s time. That meant eight points for Hopkinton for second place and five points for C-C in fourth — just enough for the Hillers to win the meet by a half-point. Catholic Memorial took third with 50 points.

While the results were coming in almost instantaneously, Donahue still wasn’t sure Hopkinton had won. Second later, however, it was clear what happened, and the Hillers were jumping up and down and celebrating on the rail that lines the track.

The team bus received a police escort once it entered Hopkinton, and the athletes celebrated with a team dinner Thursday.

“They really enjoyed it,” said Donahue, who credited the captains for their leadership. “I’m really proud of them.”

HHS girls finish 9th

The HHS girls indoor track team finished ninth at the Division 2 state meet Wednesday.

Emily Miller finished second in the high jump, Kaelyn Faeber was third in the shot put, Isabel Walker was fourth in the long jump, Callie Owens was eighth in the 55 meters, and Hopkinton also scored points in the seventh-place 4×200 relay (Abby Burke, Owens, Kaelyn Geremia and Bella Walkiewicz).