Melian finished third in the women’s 6K race at Boston for the NCAA Northeast Regionals on Nov. 13. The SBU junior ran a time of 20:29.5 to qualify for the NCAA Championships.
When SBU first joined the realm of Division I athletics in 1994, it was like Cinderella. Not necessarily beaten around, but not expected to do anything spectacular or great.
Christina Melian is the sixth different student-athlete to qualify for a Track and Field National Championship as an individual in either indoor or outdoor since 2008.
The main man behind the biggest controversy at Stony Brook in a few years is former Athletic Director Jim Fiore. He was bought out Tuesday night by the school for $800,000, covering the remaining 31 months on his contract. There are many speculations as to the rationale behind his firing, but none have been confirmed yet.
In the middle of the 30th Olympiad in London, United Kingdom, the Stony Brook Seawolves were represented in the 1,500m run by Lucy Van Dalen '12 of New Zealand. She ran well enough in her opening race on Monday that she advanced to the semifinal round. She fell in that round on Wednesday.
Senior Lucy Van Dalen ran a 15:23:54 in the 5,000m on Saturday at the Mt. SAC (San Antonio College) Relays, a school record and the fifth fastest by a New Zealand woman ever. Stony Brook track and field continued its solid weekend on Sunday with big performances by sophomores Eric Speakman and Olivia Burne, junior Lorraine McCarthy and senior Mary O'Connor at the Larry Ellis invitational hosted by Princeton University.
Senior Lucy Van Dalen, who has already accumulated many honors for herself and Seawolves' running as a whole, added a new accolade to Stony Brook Athletics' list of honors: individual national title.
