May 13, 2000

NOTRE DAME, Ind. - Just a week removed from the BIG EAST championships, the Notre Dame track and field team sent five competitors to the Billy Hayes Invitational Saturday in Bloomington, Ind. Two of the five, senior Jennifer Engelhardt (Battle Creek, Mich.) and freshman Tameisha King (Mableton, Ga.), came away with NCAA provisional marks in their events.

Engelhardt, who earned her third straight BIG EAST title last weekend, cleared 6-0 in the high jump to place second and better her previous season-best of 5-11 1/2. Engelhardt's jump is the second-highest in school history, coming up only three-quarters of an inch shorter than her school-record leap of 6-0 3/4, which she tallied at last year's Mt. SAC Relays in California.

King, who finished as the 2000 BIG EAST runner-up in the long jump, placed second once again with a leap of 20-9 1/4, just an inch and a half shorter than Ball State's Jada Phelps' winning jump of 20-10 3/4.

Also competing for the Irish women was sophomore Dore DeBartolo (Aurora, Ill.), who finished fourth in the hammer throw with a mark of 169-2.

On the men's side, senior Matt Thompson (Granite Bay, Calif.) threw a career-best 180-2 in the discus throw to earn second-place honors, while teammate sophomore Derek Dyer (Huntington, Ind.) finished fourth in the same event with a mark of 175-7, another career best. Dyer also placed 10th in the men's shot put with a throw of 50-6 3/4.

The Notre Dame men's and women's track and field squads will be back in action next weekend at the Georgia Tech Invitational, May 20, in the teams' final tune-up before the NCAA championships, May 31 - June 3.