Creston quartet topples a 19-year school record

DES MOINES — In recent years, the Panther girls track team has best been known for its 4x800m relay team. Last year, the event ran at the state meet in May.

Seemingly out of nowhere this season, a new relay has made its way to the forefront, coming up with a bid for the Drake Relays.

The Creston 4x100m relay team is comprised of three seniors and one sophomore. Avery Staver, Kadley Bailey, Braylee Pokorny and Cora Smith were nervous before their start time of 9:40 a.m. Saturday at the relays, but once the gun went off, everything fell into place.

“I was super nervous, but once I actually got settled in and got in my blocks, when he was about to say set, I was feeling a lot more confident, and I just felt really good on the blocks,” leadoff runner Staver said.

“I was watching Avery,” Bailey said. “I could see everyone. So watching Avery get out to hot start, I’m like, OK, Avery’s cooking it. Then I saw their hand off and it was super smooth.”

Staver came through strong for the Panthers, handing off to Smith for the second leg. Though she’s the youngest on the team, Smith is a returning individual state qualifier in the 400m dash and she competed in two relays at state as a freshman.

“She is our fastest girl and we have her running the longest leg,” coach Maggie Arnold explained. “We’re able to do that in the center of the relay with exchanges to make sure that she has the stick the longest for us.”

This quartet has been running the relay together all season.

“It definitely becomes natural,” Smith said. “Once you start going, it’s just like, OK, we got it.”

The Panthers were running in lane five in the fourth of 12 heats in the preliminaries. Smith came down the backstretch, ready to hand off to Bailey.

“Me and Cora’s handoff is beautiful,” Bailey said. “And then I just go.”

Though the Panthers had the lead when Bailey handed to Pokorny for the anchor leg, the lead in the 4x100 is fractions of a second. It was a race down the front stretch to see who who claim the top spot in that heat.

“It’s so intimidating knowing all these girls are coming for that finish line,” Pokorny said. “But I mean, watching all of them get out strong kind of encourages you to want to do well because they got me in a good spot; I just have to finish it.”

Pokorny crossed first, beating the team from Northeast Goose Lake by 0.04 seconds.

In running a 50.49, the Panthers met their goal of setting a new season-best time. As a bonus, they also toppled a school record from 1997, set by Catherine Kister, Elisa Hutchinson, Erin McKee and Lindsay Courtney. The previous record was 51.03.

Though Creston would end up placing 45th in the event, it was a finish more than 20 spots better than their seed coming into the relays.

“That 4x1, sometimes with handoffs, it’s stressful, but those girls are kids we can trust in the zone to get the stick across,” Arnold said. “And for today, we just preached, we’re coming here for experience. We’re going to trust our marks and not try anything overly aggressive, and we’re going to run a season-best time. And the girls did just that. They won their heat. They ran a season-best time. We finished the meet in a better seed than where we came in at. So I feel really great about how they did at this meet.”

While qualifying for Drake is an honor, the girls agreed it isn’t the end goal.

“I feel like we’re really using this as like our advantage to think, OK, we have state next. This is going to push us for state,” Smith said. “This is a great starting point to be able to get to do this and get some good competition early on. I think it’s really great setting up for the rest of the season.”

For the seniors on the team, this was their first and last chance to run at the relays.

“It was a super great experience,” Bailey said. “We’re so happy with how we did.”

Arnold is looking for more season-best times out of the girls as she said they don’t plan to peak in April.

“We want them peaking in May,” she said. “So we kind of just go at it with the mindset of if we make it, that’s wonderful and it’s a great honor. We’re definitely wanting to compete up here, but we’re not going to put all of our eggs in that basket and that being the final result of the season.”

In an unpredictable turn of events, the Waukee Northwest won the final heat of the prelims, setting a new state record of 47.06. But in the finals, the Wolves dropped the baton and were unable to finish the race. Southeast Polk took the title in 47.25.

Also running the event was the 4x100m relay team of Mount Ayr, comprised of Chloe Robb, Aubree Shields, Kate Newton and Emma Reynolds, but the girls were disqualified.