PERRY TOWNSHIP — Over the past week, all the Riverside Beavers could do was believe.

Believe they could overcome the injuries that had submarined their season to that point. Believe that the gap between them and North could be closed. Believe that a Premier Athletic Conference title was more than just a pipe dream.

“Honestly, you can’t tell difference, whether you can (do it) or you can’t. Obviously, there’s the option that we weren’t going to win, not run our best. But we didn’t want to think about it,” Riverside’s Shane Brandt said.

Now, they’ll never have to. Because they did run their best.

And they did win.

Led by a two-three finish from Brandt and Kevin DeGroot, the Beavers overcame North’s fearsome top three and a strong surge from Chardon to claim the PAC boys cross country crown Thursday on a fast course at the Perry YMCA. The Beavers finished with 39 points, while Chardon took second with 54 and North was third with 56 points.

Madison (136) took fifth, and Lakeside (156) finished sixth.

In the girls race, Madison took third place (66) Riverside was fourth (72), and Lakeside was sixth (138). The South girls took first place with 50 points.

“I don’t know what to say,” Brandt said. “We all just put it together.”

No one more so than Brandt, who set a new personal record Thursday, shattering his old one in the process by 33 seconds, with a time of 16 minutes, 48 seconds.

“He stepped way up to the next level,” Beavers coach Phil Baioni said. “That was the next level we’d been looking for all year.”

A Beavers team that didn’t know what to expect heading into the race was soon on the cusp of something special as DeGroot followed Brandt across the finish line in 16:48, though he had to survive late charges from South’s Wade Coffin and North’s Nick Clad to do it.

“I was scared,” DeGroot said. “I saw those two guys coming at me.”

DeGroot started putting distance between Coffin and Clad when someone shouted to him that he had just 200 meters left to go. What DeGroot didn’t know at the time was that he was still a quarter mile from the finish line. Luckily for DeGroot, he had enough left in his take to sustain his sprint.

“I wish I knew I had that much (energy) during the race,” he said. “I felt like I started again.”