Manhattan, KS (U-WIRE) -- Two weeks before the Big 12 Outdoor Championships, the Wildcat track and field team won two events at the historic Drake Relays Friday and Saturday in Des Moines, Iowa, and four events at the UMKC Invitational in Kansas City, Mo. With temperatures averaging 50 degrees, the 96th annual Drake Relays sold out for a 40th consecutive year as 18,000 people filled the seats to watch competitors from 62 different countries.

Despite taking a limited number of athletes to the relays, K-State won two events amid the stiff competition: the men's 4x800-meter relay and the women's triple jump.

The Wildcat 4x800-meter relay team - comprised of seniors Joseph Lee and Erik Sproll and juniors Alex Sawyer and Christian Smith - successfully avenged last year's close loss to the University of Minnesota.

"We expected ourselves to win, and we wanted it extra bad this time because last year we ended up losing by a tenth of a second," Sproll said.

The team ran to a victorious time of 7:21.32 seconds and finished 3.5 seconds ahead of the second-place finisher, the University of Missouri.

Sproll, a team captain from Winnipeg, Canada, took the baton in third place and handed it off in first to All-American Christian Smith, who ran the anchor leg for the Wildcats.

"I ran a good last 300 meters and opened it up a little bit," Sproll said. "I gave it to (Smith), and at that point we knew it was probably going to be a win."

"It was some of the best competition we could have faced, but it was not much of a race when it came down to it," he said.

"This being my last year, the win was that much better. It felt really good."

Sproll said he was not too fond of running on Drake's blue track, but the large crowd helped him run a fast time.

"The track is a little weird, but the atmosphere of the relays is a good enough distraction, so you don't really notice it," Sproll said.

Senior team captain Chaytan Hill, who was scratched from competing at last weekend's Kansas Relays due to soreness in her hamstring, rebounded to capture the triple jump title on Friday for the Cats.

Hill finished first out of 26 competitors with a jump of 44-04, and said she was pleased with her performance.

"I was happy considering I have not jumped in two weeks," Hill said.

"It was a good field," she said. "There were a couple of professional women jumping, as well as collegiates."

Hill, from Kirby, Texas, said she was also pleased that she outdistanced professional jumper Shani Marks, who usually beats her.

"She has been beating me for a while, and I was focused on trying to win and not letting her beat me again," she said.

As for her hamstring, Hill said she has fully recovered.

"It feels good now," she said. "I guess I am back to 100 percent."

Head coach Cliff Rovelto said he thought all his athletes competed well at Drake.

"For the group that was at Drake, I thought pretty much everybody did a good job," Rovelto said.

The Wildcats also sent a small number of athletes to the UMKC Invitational in Kansas City, Mo.

Sophomore Candice Mills, from Omaha, Neb., stole the show for K-State, as she won the long jump with a personal best leap of 20-07 1/4 and the 100-meter dash with a time of 12.22 seconds.

Coach Rovelto said Mills has proven her value to the team.

"She has been very consistent to score at a very high level," he said. "We think she will be someone who will be able to contribute a lot at the conference meet."

Other Wildcats winning events at UMKC were junior Annika Haedt (pole vault) and freshman Whitney Patton (3,000-meter steeplechase).

Next weekend, the Wildcats will travel to the Nebraska Invitational in Lincoln, Neb.

(C) 2004 Kansas State Collegian via U-WIRE