Emma Baeth was sprinting the final yards to the finish line with no other runner on either side, and she couldn’t quite believe what was happening.

Baeth, a senior at Baker High School, couldn’t believe she was about to win a state championship in the 1,500-meter race.

She couldn’t believe she was going to accomplish that goal in Eugene’s Hayward Field, the place where many Olympians, including some of Baeth’s own idols, have competed.

Perhaps most shocking of all, Baeth couldn’t believe how good she felt.

Physically good.

She had, after all, just run slightly less than a mile in well under five minutes.

Even the exhilaration of winning a state title can’t mask the toll that pace takes on legs and lungs.

The ecstasy of success comes with the agony of fatigue.

Yet Baeth was overwhelmed not with exhaustion but with the recognition that she was a few seconds away from accomplishing a goal she hadn’t quite dared to hope for.

“I thought, ‘oh my goodness, what’s happening?’ ” she said the day after winning the 1,500 at the Class 4A state track meet on Saturday, May 21.

Quite a lot was happening, actually.

Besides claiming the coveted state championship, Baeth had broken the BHS record for the 1,500 set in 2002 by Danielle Jordan.

Baeth, who will compete in track and cross-country at Southern Oregon University, where she plans to major in nursing, said she actually had looked at Jordan’s record on the wooden board at BHS just before leaving for the state meet.

Jordan’s time was 4:45.83.

That was about 12 seconds faster than Baeth’s best time in the 1,500.

That’s a huge difference, she said — 1,500-meter runners don’t expect to trim 12 seconds from their best time in a single race.

“I didn’t really think I would be able to,” Baeth said. “That’s so fast.”

But then the race started.

And as she loped along with the lead group of runners, Baeth glanced occasionally at the elapsed times that showed every 100 meters.

“I thought, ‘wow, we’re really going fast,’ ” Baeth said with a laugh.

But she was even more surprised — “shocking” is the adjective she chooses more than once in talking about the race — by how relatively easy it felt to keep the pace.

“About a half-mile in I was thinking that I feel surprisingly so good right now,” she said.

With about 500 meters left, Sophia Stubblefield of Phoenix started her kick — speeding up to try to outrace the rest of the field.

Baeth stayed with Stubblefield.

With 200 meters or so left she started her own kick.

With 150 meters left she was pulling ahead.

As she raced down the homestretch, Baeth’s surprise at what she had already done began to be mixed with elation about what she was about to do.

“Oh my gosh, I just won state,” she said.

Baeth had completely forgotten about Jordan’s school record.

But then she saw the numbers on the clock.

4:45.56.

And then Baker coach Suzy Cole was there, congratulating Baeth and saying that she might have just broken the record.

Neither could remember, in the excitement of the moment, the final two digits on Jordan’s time.

But when they checked the figures they realized that Baeth had nipped the record by slightly more than one quarter of a second.

“Emma absolutely ran the perfect race,” said Cole, who pointed out that Baeth’s time would also have earned her the state championship at the Class 5A meet.

“Super gratifying not only to be a state champion but it also highlighted her ability to overcome the disruptions with COVID interrupting two of her seasons,” Cole said.

But after her triumphant 1,500, Baeth’s high school career wasn’t over.

About 90 minutes later she competed in the 800-meter finals, an event she had won at several meets earlier in the season.

Just as in the 1,500, Baeth was in position to win.

But in the final 200 yards she said she got “boxed in” a bit in a group of other runners and couldn’t reach that extra bit of speed she needed.

Until the very last stride, though, Baeth believed she might win again.

“I told myself, ‘Emma, you can get another one.’ ”

It was an eyeblink of a difference.

Jennifer Tsai of Marist Catholic crossed the line in 2:21.71.

Baeth was just .14 of a second behind, at 2:21.85.

“I wasn’t upset,” she said. “I was pretty happy already. It was a really exciting race.”

Baeth said she was happy for Tsai, who had finished second in the 1,500.

That race wasn’t nearly so close, though, as Baeth finished slightly more than 3 seconds ahead of Tsai.

Baeth was also comforted by her performance in the 800. Just as in the 1,500, she ran her best time ever, coming in under the 2:22 mark for the first time.

It was her best time since her freshman year.

Baeth said it was especially gratifying to complete her high school career with personal bests in two races because she wondered, not long ago, whether she would ever match the times she set years earlier.

Baeth said a deficiency in ferritin, a protein that affects the concentration of iron in her blood, plagued her during the cross-country season in the fall of 2021.

But a change in diet, combined with medication, corrected the problem in time for the track season.

“Eating a lot of spinach, which is always fun,” Baeth said with a chuckle that suggests the leafy green, for all its healthy attributes, isn’t her favorite. “I felt 10 times better than I did in the fall.”

She also credited the training regimen that she worked on with Cole.

That included 7-mile runs on Sundays, an ordeal Baeth said she couldn’t have managed without music, and in particular a playlist dominated by Billy Joel.

Baeth said she and Cole share an affinity for Joel, who recorded most of his music long before Baeth was born.

In addition to her state championship in the 1,500 and silver medal in the 800, Baeth ran the anchor leg for Baker’s 4×400 relay team, which finished third.

“I had a first, second and third,” she said. “For my last races in a Baker jersey it was just awesome.”

And the setting couldn’t have been better.

Baeth said she competed in a middle school meet at Hayward Field, but that was before the venue on the University of Oregon campus underwent a wholesale renovation.

“It’s the most iconic track and field stadium in the country,” Baeth said. “It was just super cool to be there and have the opportunity to run there. It was kind of nerve-wracking to run where so many Olympians have run.”

“I had a first, second and third. For my last races in a Baker jersey it was just awesome.”

— Emma Baeth

“Emma absolutely ran the perfect race.”

— Baker coach Suzy Cole