VIRGINIA BEACH — A Sunday to remember, following an indoor season to remember ... and preceding an outdoor season of incredible promise.

Butler seniors Lucas Slear, Brayden Young, Guinness Brown and Ryder Kriley are simply enjoying every step of the way.

Only a few weeks after winning the Pennsylvania high school indoor team championship at Penn State University, this quartet ventured down to Virginia Beach to compete in the sprint medley relay and 4x400 meter relay at the Adidas Nationals.

CJ Singleton, the Golden Tornado’s stellar distance runner, did not make the trip.

“CJ had just run at the national meet in New York,” Butler boys track coach Mike Seybert said. “Running in this one would have been too much. We have to watch these kids. They’ve been doing a lot.

“I wasn’t sure whether these guys should have gone. Guinness will probably have to rest for three or four weeks before he can compete again, he’s been running so much. But they’re all seniors. They’re all talented. This is their last year together and they want to take advantage of that time together.

“It’s kinda hard to say no to that,” Seybert added.

Slear and Young ran 200-meter portions of the sprint medley relay. Brown ran the 400 meters while Kriley ran the final leg of 800 meters. They ran the event last Sunday morning and won it with a time of 3 minutes, 21.24 seconds. The foursome had never run that event before, yet posted the seventh-fastest time in the country.

“It was new to us, but we were favored to win based on the previous times we posted in the distances we were running,” Kriley said. “CJ would normally run that 800 leg, but my time was good enough coming in. We were confident we would win.”

Kriley said he was a few steps behind the first-place unit when he took the baton.

“I passed him up a little more than halfway through the run,” Kriley said. “It felt pretty cool winning that.”

A few hours later, the Butler quartet was at it again, running the 4x400 relay. The team took second in that event — losing out by a fraction of a second — but easily broke its previous school-record time. The unit ran a 3:21.55, snapping its old mark of 3:24.89.

All four were pretty relaxed going into that 4x400.

“I went back to the room, ate a sub and took a nap,” Brown said of his activity after the sprint medley relay.

He ran the anchor leg of the 4x400.

“The last three teams were separated by .8 of a second at the finish line,” Brown said. “It was pretty crazy. I was chasing the guy down the stretch. That always makes me run faster, but he had a strong finishing kick and beat me out.”

Brown said Butler was in third place when he got the baton.

“I get an adrenaline rush that’s hard to explain. I love being pushed,” he said.

Slear enjoyed being part of the meet. He relished the atmosphere of a national race as much as his team’s performance itself.

“We knew it was a fast track because Guinness had run here before,” Slear said. “We figured we’d be running some fast times. It was a long indoor season and I’m feeling pretty tired, but this was worth it.

“Just being out there, competing side by side with some of the best relay teams in the country felt amazing, doing it with my best friends. It was so much fun, something I’ll never forget.”

Young said the quartet’s success — without having Singleton — showed how deep Butler’s track talent actually runs.

“Everyone knows CJ is one of the best,” Young said. “We’ve got a lot of quality runners, though. That 4x4 was so close ... We almost pulled off two wins.

“The work we put in, how badly we want all of this, it all shows at competitions like this.”

Young, Slear, Brown and Presley Ornelas ran Butler’s school-record setting 4x200 relay earlier. Four of Butler’s five relays were ranked No. 1 in the state.

“All six of these seniors, the times they’ve been putting together have been insane,” Seybert said. “Watching them practice as hard as they have these past couple of years and have it culminate like this ... pretty cool.

“Winning the state outdoor team title the same year as winning the state indoor is so hard to do. It’s happened only four times in 60 years. But these guys want this. They want it bad.

“It’s going to be a fun spring,” Seybert added.