MANHATTAN, Kan. (U-WIRE) -- Four Kansas State Wildcats battled against the nation's best and one former coach earned an Olympic berth, as Wildcats of the past and present competed at the U.S. Olympic Trials on July 9-18 in Sacramento, Calif.

Kyle Lancaster (high jump), Chaytan Hill (triple jump), JaNelle Wright (heptathlon) and Christian Smith (800-meter run) all represented coach Cliff Rovelto's current squad.

Though each fell short of qualifying for next month's Olympic Games, the fact they even reached that level of competition was noteworthy, Rovelto said.

"To just get there is pretty good," he said. "You can't minimize how impressive it is to get there."

Former assistant coach Shelia Burrell and current assistant coach -- and former Wildcat track star -- Vanitta Kinard turned in the top performances of others associated with K-State track competing in the trials.

Burrell punched her ticket to Athens by capturing the heptathlon title with a score of 6,194, beating out Tiffany Lott-Hogan by 35 points.

Despite battling an ailing foot, Burrell was still able to win by an impressive margin, Rovelto said.

"Anytime at this level when you have close to a 40- to 50-point gap, that's a relatively comfortable win," he said.

Burrell's trials win makes her a two-time Olympian, as she also competed in the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia.

While Burrell is assured a spot on the Olympic team, Kinard will need one more achievement to head to Athens.

Despite earning a third-place finish in the triple jump, Kinard has yet to jump the U.S. Olympic "A" standard she must have to qualify.

Kinard is currently competing in Europe, as she strives to increase her longest jump from 46-4 to 47-7 -- the "A" standard -- by Aug. 8.

Rovelto said he is confident Kinard could make that distance, but she will need legal wind speeds at the competitions.

"She should be capable of doing that, but conditions will be a big factor," he said. "It can't be too windy."

Other athletes with K-State ties competing at the trials but who did not qualify for Team USA were former Wildcats Morgan High (high jump), Nathan Leeper (high jump), Amy Mortimer (1,500 meters), Rebekah Green (shot put) and Gwen Wentland (high jump), as well as K-State Director of Track and Field Operations Karol Rovelto (high jump).

Leeper and High reached the finals in the men's and women's high jump, respectively.

Current Wildcat Christian Smith came within a mere fraction of a second from also reaching the finals in his first Olympic trials.

The sophomore middle-distance runner -- coming off a win at the USATF Club Championships -- finished fifth in his 800-meter semifinal heat, just three-hundredths of a second away from a fourth-place finish and a spot in the finals.

"I really felt like I could have made it to the finals if I would have raced a little better," Smith said.

Though he battled nerves competing at the trials for the first time, Smith said he was excited about the possibility of facing such top competition in the future.

"I'm really excited about my future in track, and I'm looking forward to maybe making an Olympic or World Championship team someday," he said.

Assistant coach Mike Smith said Christain ran well at the trials and felt his future in the sport was promising.

"For him to advance to the semifinal round was quite an accomplishment," he said. "The experience he gets out of it is the experience to compete at a high level."

While Rovelto complemented all his current Wildcats who made it to the trials, he singled out Chaytan Hill's fifth-place finish in the triple jump for high praise.

"Out of our collegiates, the best performance was Chaytan," he said. "For a junior in college to get fifth was pretty impressive."

Overall, Rovelto said no matter their placings, current Wildcats will be taking an invaluable experience away from Sacramento.

"Whenever you can compete at a higher level, it opens your eyes for what is good," he said. "That experience is something that will help them, because they all expereience pressure to some degree by competing there."

(C) 2004 Kansas State Collegian via U-WIRE.