Five MAAC Track & Field/Cross Country Student-Athletes Earn 2015 CoSIDA/Capital One First Team Academic All-District
MAAC Sports
EDISON, N.J.- Five Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) Track & Field/Cross Country student-athletes have been named to the 2015 CoSIDA/Capital One First Team Academic All-District. Marist College’s senior Michelle Gaye, senior Mark Valentino and junior Mark Vuono, Manhattan College sophomore Lina Bengtson and Quinnipiac University junior Jennifer Mears earned the honors.
Gaye holds four individual school records: the 3K and 5K indoors, as well as the 5K and 10K outdoors. In cross country, Gaye became the first runner in program history to win an individual ECAC championship in 2014, and was a three-time ECAC All-East selection. She was also named ECAC All-East in 2014 in both indoor and outdoor track & field. Gaye was named Marist Sportsperson of the Year earlier this month at the athletic department’s Senior Awards Banquet.
Valentino is the program’s top all-time individual finisher at Penn Relays, as he recorded a fifth-place performance in the Olympic Development 3,000-meter steeplechase in 2014. He also was a USA Track & Field Junior National Championships qualifier in the steeplechase in 2012. Valentino was a four-year varsity cross country runner who was named a co-winner of the Pizzani Award at this year’s Senior Awards Banquet. He was named to the MAAC All-Academic Team the past three years.
This spring, Vuono was a key member of the 4 X 800-meter relay team, which scored and ran a season-best time at the MAAC Outdoor Track & Field Championships. He was a member of the scoring distance medley relay team at the MAAC Indoor Track & Field Championships each of the last three years. Vuono also completed in the 2013 IC4A Championships as part of the 3,200-meter relay team. He has been named to the MAAC All-Academic Team each of the last two years.
Bengtson, an electrical engineering major, was selected to the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference All-Academic Team both indoors and outdoors in 2015. She took second in the discus at the MAAC Outdoor Championships, then took 18th in the event at the ECAC Outdoor Championships. In 2014, she qualified for the NCAA East Preliminary Round in the shot put.
During the 2015 outdoor season, Mears took off with a program record throw of 39.84m (130' 9") in the javelin on April 26 at the Yale Springtime Invitational. Mears' monster throw bested her previous program record of 36.38m by over 11 feet. She went on to finish 3rd at the MAAC Championships, moving up one spot from the 2014 conference championships, with a throw of 37.84m which was the second-best performance of her career. The junior wrapped up the 2015 campaign with an 11th place result at the New England Championships, moving up four spot from 2014 with a throw of 37.40m.
To be eligible for Academic All-America® consideration, a student-athlete must be a varsity starter or key reserve, maintain a cumulative G.P.A. of 3.30 on a scale of 4.00, have reached sophomore athletic and academic standings at his/her current institution and be nominated by his/her sports information director. Since the program's inception in 1952, CoSIDA has bestowed Academic All-American honors on more than 20,000 student-athletes in Divisions I, II, III and NAIA, covering all NCAA championship sports.