The Baldwin boys track and field team made a recon mission to Mililani on Friday and got an eyeful.

The defending state champions had four individual winners in the Honolulu Marathon Invitational, hoping that they can follow it up when the state meet hits the same site next month.

"We’re considering this a pre-state championship," Baldwin coach Ardis Anguay said. "We feel like we have the bodies trained, but now it is time to train the brains. We hope competing here does that."

Baldwin brought six athletes to the regular-season meet at Kamehameha last year, and it helped them win the state crown. The Bears brought 12 to the meet on Friday, hoping they will be twice as good.

"It is a good outlook on what to expect at states," Keelan Ewaliko said. "We were just coming here to try our best — that’s all you can ask for. It was good to win, but now we go back home and get better before states."

Ewaliko won the 200-meter dash and his mates swept the hurdles, with Abraham Reinhardt taking the 110 and Tyler Feitera winning the 300. Miki Fangatua won the shot put for the Bears, and their sprinters won the 4×100 relay. Nothing came easy for the Bears, though, especially for Ewaliko.

Ewaliko entered the meet with the top marks in the state in the 100, 200 and long jump and anchored the top-ranked 4×100 relay. He did not jump on Friday due to event restrictions.

Ewaliko was a loser the first time he hit the track on Friday, getting a bad start and running a 10.82 and losing to Kamehameha’s Logan Ne’s 10.7 effort in the 100. The field was a victim of a false start and Ewaliko lost his focus and was surprised how quickly the gun sounded. Still, Ewaliko passed everyone but Ne.

"I think it was nerves, a little bit of everything," Anguay said. "He still has to work on his starts, but he is getting better. Sometimes he likes to play catch-up."

Ewaliko made up for that loss by anchoring the Bears in the 4×100 relay. Their 42.84 clocking beat Damien by 1.10 seconds.

But it was in the 200 where the crowd saw what the defending state champion was made of. Ne jumped out in front of Ewaliko again, and kept the lead after the turn. Ewaliko turned on the jets with about 40 yards left and just got past Ne at the tape.

"I got out good," Ewaliko said. "But after he beat me in the 100, I was like, OK, he is fast. Trailing him was not a good feeling, after the turn I had to throw everything out there. It took all I had."

Moanalua’s Thomas Cheong and Punahou’s Nikolai Scharer joined Ewaliko as state champions winning their events on Friday. Cheong won the triple jump with a mark of 45 feet, 4 inches and Scharer ran a 4:13.03 in the 1,500 meters to beat Gary Fanelli of Damien’s 4:13.46.

Seabury Hall’s Dakota Grossman won the 800 meters but lost to Elli Brady of Punahou in the 1,500. The distance darlings ran shoulder-to-shoulder for much of the race, but Brady outkicked her for a time of 4:45.90 and Grossman couldn’t respond and clocked a 4:47.19. Punahou’s Teri Brady won the 3,000 meters.

Alyssa Bettendorf of Seabury Hall won the 200- and 400-meter dashes, beating Pearl City’s Diamond Briscoe and Christian Academy’s Raion Black in the former. Bettendorf also anchored Seabury Hall’s winning 4×400 relay team.