Dexter senior delivers an 'in the moment' relay anchor leg to claim C3 state title

Heading into the final leg of Saturday’s MSHSAA Class 3 3200-meter relay race, the Dexter High School foursome of Anistin Kyle, Cameron Bell, Chase Farmer, and Chris Stone were only a step behind the leader of the race, Priory High School. But the kids from St. Louis weren’t who any team on the track needed to be focused on at that point.

Southern Boone County High School’s relay trailed Priory and Dexter by nine seconds and was in fourth place, but everyone at the MSHSAA Class 3 State Finals at Adkins Stadium at Jefferson City High School knew who Southern Boone had in their pocket ready to unleash.

“That anchor (runner) for Southern Boone,” first-year Dexter coach Chad Jamerson said, “is arguably one of the greatest distance runners in Missouri state high school history. You could argue that (Conner Burns) is one of the great high school distance runners in (United States) history.”

And he showed it.

Burns smoked the rest of the field over the final 800 meters of the aforementioned relay race by running a leg that was five seconds faster than any other anchor leg.

But it wasn’t enough to catch Bearcat senior Chris Stone.

Kyle, Bell, and Farmer had given Stone a nine-second lead to work with and Stone held on, not just holding off a charging Burns, but scorching the anchor leg of Priory by eight seconds and delivering Dexter a state championship.

“It’s a special day when you can come home with the top hardware,” Jamerson said. “Those kids, all four of them, have worked so hard at this event over the last two years.”

Jamerson, and in particular Kyle, who his coach said has “an encyclopedic knowledge of high school runners in Missouri,” knew that the Bearcats couldn’t be close to Southern Boone entering the final leg.

“We knew that Conner was going to be a threat in that anchor,” Jamerson said, “so we knew that we were going to have to create a little space.”

The first three Bearcats had done their job, so the state title rested in the heart and lungs of Stone, who had battled a lingering ankle injury, followed by a case of mononucleosis, which had just been a dose of cold water on his hopes for a fantastic senior spring.

“We set Chris up to do what Chris does,” Jamerson said. “Chris is an ‘in the moment' athlete. Chris knew the magnitude of the moment.”

Stone, the lone senior on the relay, finished his great track and field career in a glorious – and winning – manner.

“You are happy for all four of them,” Jamerson said, “but especially Chris. He has been such a cornerstone of this track program for (three) years. He did not have a freshman season due to COVID, and then he competed as a sophomore and junior.

“To cap his 4X800 journey with a state championship was certainly special for all of us.”

The Bearcats finished 13th in the team standings with 20 points, just one point behind 10th-place Notre Dame High School.

Dexter senior Andrew Saylors finished 12th in the javelin (140 feet, four inches) to complete his first season of competing in the event, while other Dexter athletes included the 800-meter relay team of Maliki Hinson-Flores, RJ Farmer, Lee-michael McDonald, and Juan Cuevas (10th, 1:32.05), Farmer (300-meter hurdles, sixth, 41.36), Kyle (800 meters, eighth, 1:59.46), and the mile relay of Kyle, Bell, Farmer, and Stone (third, 3:27.18).

On the girl’s side, Bearcat sophomore Abbie Lloyd placed sixth in the pole vault with a school record vault of 10 feet, 3 ½ inches.

Other Dexter girls to compete included Karis Kennedy (triple jump, 15th place; long jump, 12th), Nia Stromas (300-meter hurdles, 15th), and Allison Turnbo (100-meter hurdles, 16th).

This is the first of several Dexter High School track and field articles to be published this week.