By: By: Bill Morgal, Sports Information Director
LOCK HAVEN, Pa. – Junior women's cross country athlete
Neely Spence was named on Friday morning to the 2010-11 PSAC Fall Top 10 squad. It is the sixth consecutive season that Shippensburg has had a PSAC Top 10 award winner.
Spence is a human communications studies major seeking a minor in coaching who has compiled a 3.84 grade-point average through five semesters at Shippensburg. It is the second PSAC Top 10 award for Spence, a two-time USTFCCCA All-Academic Team member and a 2009-10 ESPN/CoSIDA Third Team Academic All-American.
In her third collegiate cross country season, Spence, the 2010 USTFCCCA Division II Cross Country Female Athlete of the Year, became the first women's cross country national champion in school history and earned the second All-American award of her career. Her time of 20:41.2 at the 2010 Division II National Championships in Louisville was 15 seconds faster than Western Washington's Sarah Porter.
Spence has been selected as a PSAC Athlete of the Year in all seven of her collegiate seasons to date (cross country [3], indoor track [2], outdoor track [2]). Her efforts this fall helped Shippensburg come away with a team trophy, as the Lady Raiders finished fourth at the national championships. Spence has lost just once over her last two seasons of collegiate cross country racing.
She is the three-time defending PSAC and Atlantic Region champion who finished the 2010 season undefeated in six races. Spence finished 70 seconds ahead of the field at the PSAC Championships and 51 seconds ahead of the field at the Atlantic Region Championships.
SU had two of its female athletes receive PSAC Fall Top 10 awards; as Spence was honored along with senior field hockey player
Kristen Brooks. With its two honorees on Friday, Shippensburg has taken the lead among league institutions with 39 career recipients of the PSAC Top 10 award. Edinboro and Clarion have had 38 all-time honorees while East Stroudsburg, Indiana (Pa.) and Slippery Rock boast 35 selections since the award was first instituted in the fall of 1997.