T-R PHOTO BY THORN COMPTON • Marshalltown senior Regan Mazour, left, takes off from her starting point while junior Alyvia Chadderdon approaches with the baton for the final handoff in the girls 4x100-meter race Friday.

DES MOINES — When the Marshalltown girls 4×100-meter relay team took the blue oval at Drake Stadium on Friday for the 109th running of the Drake Relays, making the finals on Saturday was the squad’s main goal.

That goal was a difficult one to achieve, considering the girls entered as the 69th seeded team of the 80 relays invited, so outside of making one of the final eight spots the team of Kierra Gardner, Sara Trowbridge, Alyvia Chadderdon and Regan Mazour wanted to at least improve upon their seed time.

They accomplished the latter goal and then some, running their best time of the season with a 52.26 and moving up from a 69th seeding to a 55th placing.

Mazour, the lone senior on the team, said just walking out onto the track was a bit overwhelming.

“It was scary, the track is really intimidating,” Mazour said with a chuckle. “It looks a lot bigger than you think.”

Even if the girls were intimidated, they still ran their best race of the season, starting with a good start by Gardner. She said running the first leg of the race is important, so all she wanted to do was not mess up.

“I started off pretty well, I get a little nervous sometimes about that since I start,” Gardner said. “The handoff between me and Sara was great, I just though it was all great. It finished pretty fast.”

The handoff to Trowbridge on the second leg was clean and the sophomore took off down the first straightaway, racing to deliver the baton to Chadderdon awaiting in the third spot.

“It was really exciting to come run here,” she said. “I was a little nervous at first, I think we all were, but it was really exciting and really fun to run.”

Again the exchange between Trowbridge and Chadderdon was clean, and as Chadderdon rounded the second curve she had nudged out a little breathing room and set up Mazour for a good finish.

All that stood between the Bobcats and their best time of the season was a clean handoff at the finish and a strong anchor by Mazour, and the lone senior delivered in her first running in the Relays.

“I don’t really remember the handoff, which usually means it was probably good, but I think we executed really well,” Mazour said. “I mean we got a personal record.”

With a race like the 4×100 it’s difficult to process exactly what happened with the legs taking so little time, but Chadderdon said looking back on it she doesn’t know anything the girls could have done better.

“Everything went so fast it is kind of hard to remember what happened, but I felt like we were just excited to be here and do the best with what we could in our ninth heat,” Chadderdon said. “I thought we did really well, I’m proud of us.”