Mount St. Mary's sophomore Rob Pendergist, who missed the NCAA's automatic standard in the decathlon by just 10 points last week when he won the IC4A championship, will compete in this week's national championship meet nonetheless as one of five provisional entries.

Pendergist will join 11-time All-America Peter Rono as the Mount's two participants in the event, to be held Friday and Saturday at the University of Oregon in Eugene.

Pendergist scored a career-high 7,540 in winning the IC4A title last weekend. Though the score was just shy of the automatic qualifying mark set by the NCAA, it still was one of the top 16 collegiate performances of the year, which catapults the native of Ellsworth, Maine, into the field. Only 11 decathletes reached the standard, and Pendergist's score was the best among the five others who earned an at-large spot.

Last year, Pendergist missed the qualifying standard by 49 points, but failed to earn an entry to the national meet. His score of 7,451 points was tops among all freshmen in 1989-90.

Rono, the Olympic gold medalist at the 1988 Games in the 1,500 meters, won his way to Eugene via a second-place finish in the mile run at the NCAA indoor championships in Indianapolis this past March. Earlier this spring, Rono won the prestigious Jumbo Elliott mile at the Penn Relays Carnival.