JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — With so much hugging and squealing, you wouldn’t know Benton’s 4x400-meter relay team had just run its last race of the year.

Although it didn’t reach the finals, the Cardinals’ youthful squad broke its own school record at the Missouri State Track and Field Championships on Friday. The underclassmen-heavy squad finished 10th in 4 minutes, 8.64 seconds at Dwight T. Reed Stadium after entering the Class 3 preliminaries with the second-slowest time.

“To end up at this point, all the credit goes to the girls and how hard they’ve worked,” Benton coach Damon Alsup said. “And not a single one had anything left.”

Sophomore Hannah Moore bounced back from her 11th-place finish in the 400-meter run earlier in the day and got the team off to its best start of the season. After lining up in Lane 8, Moore blazed around the track and put the Cardinals in the middle of the pack with her first time under 1 minute.

“That was my main accomplishment,” Moore said after hearing her split. “Out there, I feel like I’m already in first so I’ve got to hold onto it.”

The rest of the team — Gade Wilkinson, Blayr Bolton and Heavin Warner — ran its laps to near-perfection, and the track-side monitor displayed the record-breaking news as Warner charged across the finish line.

“Hopefully, we can keep this thing going the next couple years,” Moore said.

Crashing beginning

Bad starts don’t normally phase Lindsay Laderoute.

Usually unflappable in both hurdle events, the Lafayette junior often builds momentum as she nears the finish line. But the first hurdle of her 300-meter race proved too great an obstacle.

“I just smashed into it and couldn’t make up enough ground from there,” Laderoute said.

She went on to finish 10th in the event, but Laderoute received a silver lining, however, in the 100 hurdles. She qualified for the finals for the second year in a row after finishing third in her heat.

Traditionally, Laderoute excels in the longer of the two races, but not even she could explain her preliminary performances.

“I’ve done well in the things that I haven’t worked on as much and struggled in ones that I have,” Laderoute said. “That’s just the way this season has gone.”

Running out of Lane 1 in the 100, Laderoute bumped arms three times with Soldan’s Chelsea Johnson but managed to retain her composure on the way to a 15.75 — the sixth-best Class 3 time.

Laderoute battled nausea before the 300 hurdles, however, and failed to make the finals in the event after finishing sixth a year ago. Her 45.82 would have placed her fifth in last year’s finals.

“I’m disappointed, but I’ve already made it farther than most people do,” Laderoute said.

Teammate Kyle Williams will compete in today’s long jump.

First-time jitters

The city’s other competitors struggled in the first day of competition, as the rest of St. Joseph’s medal hopes faded in prelims.

The packed grandstands intimidated Central’s Justin Love and Mackenzie Evans, who both competed in the short-distance hurdle events.

“It was just kind of overwhelming with the whole crowd,” Love said. “It definitely got to my nerves a little bit.”

After posting impressive times the week before, both Indians finished well short of their sectional paces. Evans, just a freshman, came closest to advancing to finals but finished ninth overall in the prelims — four-hundredths of a second behind Rockwood Summit’s Bethany Buell.

Both Central hurdlers will have at least one more shot at reaching the finals, as Love will be a senior next year.