April 23, 2002

Houston, Texas -

University of Houston senior Rhian Clarke was named the Conference USA Women's Track and Field Athlete of the Week after automatically qualifying for the NCAA Championships on April 20. Clarke won the women's pole vault at the LSU Team Invitational with a mark of 13 feet, 7.25 inches (4.15 meters) It equals her outdoor career-best vault and is the third time she has cleared 13 feet, 1.50 inches (4.00 meters) this season. Clarke and Krystal Ward led Houston to a fourth place finish at the LSU Team Invitational with 60.50 points. Ward won the high jump with a leap of 5 feet, 10 inches (1.78 meters). She was one centimeter short of provisionally qualifying for the NCAA Championships in her first outdoor high jump competition. Ward provisionally qualified for the NCAA meet in the heptathlon when she was the runner-up with 5,286 points at the Texas Relays on April 3-6. Courtnie Ratliff returned from a knee injury to finish second in the 400 meters with a time of 54.89 seconds. Ratliff also ran on Houston's 4x400-meter relay team that finished second in 3:40.09. That was over five seconds faster than when they opened the season with a time of 3:45.81 at the College Station Relays on March 16. Houston also had two third place finishes in the meet. Lauren Smith had a wind-aided time in the 200 meters with 23.77 seconds and Jessica Edwards had a mark of 11 feet, 5.75 inches (3.50 meters) in the pole vault. The Lady Cougars will have split squads competing at the Penn Relays on April 25-27 and the Rice All-Comers meet on April 26-27.