COLUMBIA, Mo. - Blair Oaks senior Kayla Jones knows all too well what second place feels like.
She was on the Lady Falcons softball team that finished runner-up in Class 2 in 2016 and '17. She was on the Blair Oaks basketball team that lost in overtime in the district championship game this past season. And she ran on the Lady Falcons' 4x800-meter relay last season that finished second at state.
Jones finally experienced her state championship moment Saturday at the Class 3 state track and field championships at Walton Stadium on the University of Missouri campus.
Blair Oaks won the girls 4x800 with a time of 9:52.49, finishing nearly 11 full seconds ahead of runner-up Lawson.
"My mom was the only state champ in our house, and now I can bring this gold medal home and say, 'You're not the only one, Mom,'" said Jones, whose mother, Kelli, won state titles in the 4x200-meter relay and the 400-meter dash at Marceline.
"My sisters might be a little jealous at first, but they're going to be proud and they're going to love it too."
Blair Oaks never trailed in the relay, as Natalie Heckman opened with a 2:24 split as she made the first handoff to Jones.
"I was trying to come in first at the beginning," Heckman said. "It was just really nerve-racking because I just wanted to get a good place for the rest of my team."
Jones put the Lady Falcons ahead by six seconds at the halfway point of the race with a 2:28 split. Then Bailey Rissmiller padded the lead to nine seconds with a 2:36 split and only 800 meters remaining.
"When I saw Kayla turn the corner, I saw the distance that she had on second place and I knew that I was just going to have to run my race and not worry about distance," Rissmiller said.
Emily Sporleder closed the relay with a 2:24 split, running alone on the final straightaway for the last 100 meters.
"The faster I run, the faster it's done," Sporleder said.
Blair Oaks came up shy of breaking the 4x800 school record of 9:49.02, the time they posted last season at state.
Jones will be the only departure next season on the 4x800. Heckman, Rissmiller and Sporleder are all sophomores.
"With the target on our back, we do know that we're going to have to step it up and work harder at practice," Rissmiller said. "Everyone is going to want to beat us and we're just going to have to keep making ourselves better."
Blair Oaks wrapped up the day in the 4x400-meter relay. The quartet of Payton Mitchell, Heckman, Jones and Sporleder finished in seventh place with a time of 4:09.59.
The Lady Falcons finished third in the first heat, and they had to wait and watch the results of the second heat to learn if they had made the podium with a top-eight finish.
"At first, I thought we finished fourth (in our heat), so the whole time I was thinking four or less teams need to get under 4:09," Jones said. " We saw fourth place (in the second heat) ran a 4:10, and we were like, 'We did it, baby.'"
Sporleder ran the fourth leg for Blair Oaks, pulling the Lady Falcons from fourth place to just four-hundredths of a second behind Eldon in a photo finish.
"The 400 is her race," Jones said. "That's why you put her at anchor, even in the 4x800. We have so much confidence in her."
Jones finishes her career with six state medals. She was all-state all four seasons in the 4x800 and she medaled in the 4x400 as a junior and a senior.
"Blair Oaks is very fortunate to have great athletes there," Jones said. "We go to practice every day and compete, knowing that we're going to get an elite team that can come to state."
Heckman finished the day with three state medals. Between the two relays, she took fifth in the 800-meter run with a time of 2:24.69, a similar time to what she ran in the 4x800.
"I definitely think I've stuck at that time more recently," Heckman said. "It's a good time going into next year."
Heckman was in eighth place with 300 meters to go. The ninth-place runner passed her, but not for long. Heckman quickly made her push near the front of the pack, passing four runners in the process.
"Coach (Marc Keys) says in these races, like at state, you want to make sure you wait a little bit longer (to make a push) than you usually would," Heckman said.
On the other hand, in the boys 800, Blair Oaks senior Adam McCauley made an early move, and it nearly cost him a medal.
In eighth place at the halfway point, McCauley kicked it into gear and was in third place with 200 meters to go.
And then, something was wrong.
"I started tightening up with about 150 to go," McCauley said. "I knew I had some left in the tank, but these guys, they've got sprint speed. I knew I had to give it a little earlier."
McCauley faded a few spots during the final straightaway, but he narrowly avoided a collision in a tight pack of runners with 40 meters to go that would have cost him a state medal. He finished in sixth place with a time of 2:01.58.
"There was more pushing and shoving than I'm used to," McCauley said. "But it was a good race."
Blair Oaks' other state qualifier on the boys side, senior Marcus Edler, also received all-state honors.
Edler finished with a time of 11.24 seconds in the preliminaries of the 100-meter dash, just three-thousandths of a second ahead of Dexter's Seth Rogers for the last spot in the final.
"I was expecting to run a better time than that," Edler said. "It felt slow to me, so I just had to sit there and watch the times and see if I got in."
Edler did better in the final, posting a time of 11.10 seconds to take sixth place in the state.
"I was looking at some of these kids and thought I could beat them, so I was going to do my darndest to get there," he said.
Edler holds the school record in the 100 at 10.97 seconds.
In other events Saturday, Mitchell missed all-state honors by one spot in the girls 300-meter hurdles. The freshman finished ninth with a time of 47.58 seconds.
Sophomore Kati Schoeneberg finished 14th in the girls 1,600-meter run with a time of 5:57.07.
The Blair Oaks girls medaled in three of their five events, finishing in 14th place in the team standings with 16 points.
The Falcons medaled in both their events and ended in a seven-way tie for 30th place with six points.
Trinity swept the Class 3 team championships. The girls scored 118 points - including 29 in the 100-meter hurdles - and the boys posted 100 points.
John Burroughs took second in the girls standings with 59 points, while Knob Noster and Cardinal Ritter tied for third with 29 points.
The Cardinal Ritter boys took second with 82 points, followed by Centralia in third place with 48 points. Maplewood-Richmond Heights placed fourth as a team with 27 points.