The following is reprinted with permission from the Charleston (West Virgina) Daily Mail.

Eddie Rivers was there, lurking in the final turn. He'd been building toward this moment all day. Even after five events in the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference track and field championships, he hoped he still had something left in the tank.

A 4x400 meter title for Concord University was riding on it. Four men stood in the way.

They never saw him coming.

"When I got that baton, all I could think was that I had a lot of work to do," Rivers said just days after the close of the WVIAC meet in Wheeling. "When I hit that homestretch, I turned it on. Nobody could see my kick.

"I just out-kicked everybody."

Rivers, along with teammates Niles Lashway, Ryan White and Belias Petit-Homme, won the race.

At least, that's what the official results say.

Problem was, after watching a video of the race, Rivers knew better.

No way he could win it like this.

When West Virginia Wesleyan's Adrian Brown handed off to Rico Greenhowe after the 4X4's first leg, officials say someone stepped out of the lane.

So when Wesleyan's Dustin Jones crossed the finish line -- a full nine seconds ahead of Rivers and in conference-record time -- the team was disqualified. Officials declared Concord the winner.

"You look at the video, and that made it even tougher," Concord coach Mike Cox said. "You could see how an official may have called (Wesleyan out). It was close."

Too close for Rivers.

"I felt as though Wesleyan ran hard all year long," he said. "When they really won it and got (disqualified), we felt they deserved it."

And that's why Rivers and his teammates, after accepting their championship, left their rightful place atop the winners' podium and walked into the stands. There, amid applause, they gave their plaques to the team from Wesleyan.

Rivers says their opponents were honored by the move.

"Everyone was real emotional," he says. "We hugged them, and I told them, 'I'm going to give you what I felt you deserved.'

"They said they'd never witnessed anything like that before in their life," he says.

They could have. This isn't the first time this has happened. In fact, Rivers was just returning the favor.

Two years ago, Wesleyan senior Paul Moore gave up a shot on the all-WVIAC cross country team, saying he felt a runner from Wheeling Jesuit nipped him at the finish line. Moore received the NCAA men's national award for sportsmanship for that act.

Time will tell whether Rivers gets his due. For him, it probably doesn't matter. For him, sportsmanship and humility is just a built-in part of who he is.

"Most athletes think only of themselves," he said. "I'm not that type of person. I like to do what's right. Some people are just born with (sportsmanship)."

Like Eddie Rivers?

"You could say that."