Jumper Chavous Nichols had a fantastic Easter weekend in Wichita, Kan., outside in the freezing cold and driving rain.

He and his teammates returned to State College yesterday cold and wet, but, more importantly, victorious in Wichita State's annual K.T. Woodman Classic, thanks in large part to their All-American senior.

The Nittany Lions accumulated 201 points on the weekend, enough to easily knock off second place finisher Nebraska, which collected 131 points, and third-place finisher Air Force, which grabbed 129.

Nichols, who lived in Wichita for much of his childhood, spent the weekend surrounded by a cheering section of nearly 30 friends and relatives, and he rewarded them by individually capturing 25 of the Lions' points.

He started Saturday's competition by placing fifth in the high jump and went on to take first in the long jump and triple jump. Both victories were good enough to surpass NCAA regional qualifying standards, and his long jump of 25 feet, 3/4-inches was a personal best.

"He had about 25 or 30 people cheering for him all day," Penn State men's track coach Harry Groves said. "His mom was up from Atlanta and he had a bunch of little kids hanging on him all day. Then he went out and got 25 points to let them know why he was in town."

While Nichols had a banner day, most of the athletes struggled with the terrible weather.

Groves said that the conditions were the worst in recent memory, and that the weather had a tremendous impact on the meet.

"The weather was absolutely atrocious," he said. "It pulled down a lot of the performances; it was almost unbearable to be out there all day."

The Lions took first place in seven of the day's 18 events, a feat that is all the more impressive considering the difficulties of performing consistently under such challenging conditions.

For the second week in a row, the Penn State throwers combined for an impressive performance with Dane Miller winning the shot-put with a throw of 53-feet, 8 1/4-inches and Matt Moyer taking the javelin while meeting another NCAA regional qualifying mark with a throw of 218-feet, 10-inches.

Overall, Groves said he was extremely happy with the effort of his team and the quality of individual competition that the athletes faced, but he also said that he was disappointed with the quality of team competition.

"I was really surprised by the difference between us and Nebraska," he said. "It seemed like they fooled around a lot with the events and ended up losing their shirt. We focused a bit more and used the people that we would normally use in every event."