1-2-3 Recipe

~Alyssa is all smiles as she anchors the D-Med to a Drake title.

~Bree and Langley celebrated a successful 2011 Drake Relays.

The 2010 Drake Relays featured a little bit of everything. Utah had it's first ever individual champion as Alyssa Abbott won the 1500 meter run near the end of the meet on Saturday afternoon. There was a near miss at a second champion in the rain on Friday as Langley Iverson was second in the high jump. Freshman Amanda Mergaert was fourth in the 1500 just off the pace set by Abbott. Then there was multi eventer, Bree LeRoy who fell going over the ninth hurdle in the first event of the heptathlon and went on to finish 12th of the 13 finishers. A few solid relay finishers were sprinkled in the middle.

Drake Relays History Lesson
With ABC Television celebrating 50 years of The Wide World of Sports on April 29th this year the sport of track and field and the Drake Relays come to the forefront again. Wide World was a weekly Saturday afternoon program that featured sporting events from all over the world. Boxing, soccer, bull riding, car racing, bowling, etc were among the many sports that were featured on a regular basis. However, the very first event televised on WWS was the 1961 Drake Relays. Track & Field events all over the world (especially those that featured the US vs Russia) also became a staple of the WWS line up each year.

Present Day
Fast forward to 2011 and this year's annual Drake Relays...the 102nd edition of America's Athletic Classic...one of premier track and field meets held in the world.

~The week started with LeRoy gaining redemption in the multi event as she was the day one leader and ended up second overall with a new lifetime best score of 5,090 (her first time over 5000 points).

~Iverson followed up last years runner up performance with a third place finish this year despite clearing a bar three inches higher.

~The University of Utah crowned it's first ever relay championship at the Drake Relays as the Distance Medley relay team of Amanda Mergaert, Ashley Mosley, Lucy Yates, and Alyssa Abbott ran 11:17.09 to run away from the field.

One more day to go. What's next? Stay tuned and check back tomorrow for more results.