On a dark and dreary Saturday afternoon at the 75th annual Kansas Relays, it would have been pretty easy for Missouri’s Christian Cantwell to pack his shot put into his equipment bag and call it a day.

Cantwell’s problem: You can’t really pack it up when you’re competing against some of the world’s best, no matter the conditions.

“Coming into the meet, if you look at the field you see names like Andy Bloom and Kevin Toth,” said Cantwell, a junior and a four-time All-American as a Tiger. “Anytime you see those names, you got to bring your A-game. You better show up or else you get embarrassed.”

Cantwell’s pride brought out the best in him Saturday. He not only competed with some of the top U.S. throwers but defeated them all with a whopping mark of 70-feet, 11*2 inches.

“It’s a huge mark. I can honestly say I wasn’t expecting that,” said Cantwell, who missed breaking Toth’s Relays record by a little more than a foot.

Still, Cantwell’s final heave Saturday easily surpassed the Eldon, Mo., native’s personal-best mark of 69-2, which he had just set on his penultimate throw, and was better than Toth’s best mark Saturday of 69.

“On my last throw I had already knew I won it,” said Cantwell, who was also named the male outstanding athlete of the Relays. “I didn’t have anything to worry about, so I just went after it.

“When it took off, to be honest with you, I didn’t think it would be that good. But when it hit I was just, like, ‘Wow, that’s crazy.'”

Cantwell’s emergence in such a prestigious meet, he said, was a testament to a new approach, which he began last week after a “horrible” effort at the Missouri Invitational.

“I had a really bad meet last week,” Cantwell said. “It was awful. I was all over the place, falling down. It looked like I’d never thrown the ball before.

“I really sat down and tried to just make a list of the things I needed to do to get back to the way I was (throwing) indoors.”

This past Big 12 indoors season, Cantwell just missed out on the shot title, losing to Nebraska’s Carl Myerscough.

“I had a really, really great week of preparation,” said Cantwell, who walked on at Missouri. “I mean, everything was right. I was throwing far. I was hitting the right conditions.

“Coming into this meet I was really confident that I could throw far. But I didn’t know I could throw 70-foot.”

Cantwell’s new mindset and renewed confidence has him thinking that if his progression continues in the shot put, he might be able to make a career out of the sport much like Toth and Bloom.

“The Olympics  that’s always been my dream since I was a little kid,” Cantwell said. “I never really realized that I really had a legitimate chance until this year.”