SHIPPENSBURG — It's 8:30 a.m. — the middle of second period at Karns City High School — and the four members of the Gremlin boys 400-meter relay team are hard at work.

Not on math or English or history.

But on handoffs.

Seniors Tristan Rhoades, Logan Moroney, Tyler Dunn and Alessandro Marotto are out on the Karns City track working out the rough edges on the passing of the baton.

In a short relay race like the 400, the smoother the exchanges the better.

And practice makes perfect — even if it is during the quartet's study hall.

“It was really cool,” Dunn said. “It definitely paid off. Our handoffs were never really that good. We knew if we wanted to place at state, we had to work on it.”

And work they did.

It was difficult to get in the required practice time because Dunn and Marotto are also members of the school's baseball team.

That necessitated some outside-the-box thinking.

When they didn't practice during study hall, they often came to school at 5:30 a.m. to practice before classes started.

“It was definitely unorthodox,” Rhoades said.

As a result of the extra practice, the quartet shaved off precious time in the event and qualified for the PIAA Track and Field Championships, which were held at Shippensburg University over the Memorial Day weekend.

Karns City went out and ran a scintillating time of 43.18 seconds in the preliminaries Friday to reach the finals Saturday.

That mark ranks third all-time in Butler County history.

The Gremlins finished in 43.70 in the finals Saturday to place fourth.

“It was really exciting,” Moroney said. “We didn't expect to run a time like that. We were expecting upper 43s, but not (43.18). We really didn't think we could get that.”

The quartet had an idea that they could do well based on a practice in Shippensburg when they arrived Thursday.

“We hit our steps exactly right,” Rhoades said. “We did our handoffs to perfection. It gave us a lot of confidence.”

So, too, did having Dunn and Marotto in the relay.

Dunn didn't sprint last season and Marotto joined the track program this year.

Moroney also said a key to the relay team's success was getting everyone in the right legs.

Rhoades ran the first leg, followed by Moroney and Dunn. Marotto ran the anchor leg.

“It was actually just a week before districts when we got it set in stone,” Rhoades said. “We kind of just took off from there.”