Wichita ? The Lawrence High baseball team was rested and ready to play two Saturday afternoon at Lawrence Dumont Stadium. The skies didn’t cooperate, and the Lions had to bus back home. No sweat. They’ll bus back down and give winning a state championship another try Monday, weather permitting.

The Free State High 4×100-meter boys relay team didn’t get a chance to finish Saturday either, but there would be no second chance for the runners who stayed together for five years, dating all the way back to Southwest Junior High.

Rain delayed the meet for a couple of hours, but didn’t cancel the day’s events at Cessna Stadium.

“It’s a good thing it’s an all-weather track,” legendary Kansas University miler Jim Ryun said on his way out. “It would have been on a cinder track in my day. Rain was trouble on cinders.”

Weather had nothing to do with Free State’s sprint relay team being unable to finish business it started two years ago with a third-place medal at the state meet.

Austin Winn, Christian Ballard, Ryan Murphy and twin brother Brian Murphy stood as strong a chance as any 4×100 relay team to take home the gold.

As he waited to take the baton from Winn, Ballard, so much bigger than the average sprinter, figured the Firebirds were on their way to first place.

As Ryan Murphy angled his body to watch Ballard chug down the backstretch, he too figured he was waiting to take the state championship baton from the tight end he threw passes to and ran behind for big gains in football. Ryan never got the chance to hand the baton to the twin he handed the football to so often for long runs.

Ryan read the first sign of trouble in Ballard’s expression. Ballard had been battling hamstring troubles throughout the late stages of the season.

“His face looked a little more tense than usual, but I didn’t think much of it,” Ryan said. “Then when I was getting ready to take the baton, I heard him yelling, ‘Stop, stop, stop.’ I never even got the baton.”

After making it through Friday’s preliminaries, Ballard said he thought he had one more race left in his left hamstring.

“Once I entered the exchange zone it really tightened up,” Ballard said. “I tried to get it to him, but by the time he stopped, I couldn’t even run. I feel like we definitely would have won it. Ryan would have gotten it and taken off.”

Ryan captured the group’s disappointment: “Sophomore year, taking third, I thought we’d be making a lot of noise in Kansas and would be two-time state champions. Just bad luck.”

A year ago, the foursome was disqualified from the state meet because Brian Murphy tossed the baton to the ground in frustration over not finishing first after running the anchor leg at the regionals.

“It’s not like he spiked it,” Ryan said, defending his twin. “I thought that was a ticky-tack ruling. Bad luck.”

The Murphy twins will compete for Kansas University in football, Ballard for Iowa. Winn is off to Hillsdale College in Michigan to run track. When they look back on the time they competed together at Free State, they will remember more than the disappointing finish.

“We’ve become close,” Ballard said. “Hopefully, we’ll be friends for the rest of our lives.”