SU's All-Time PSAC Top 10 Winners

LOCK HAVEN, Pa. – Junior women's outdoor track athlete Neely Spence was named Friday morning to the 2010-11 PSAC Spring Top 10 squad. Spence finished the 2010-11 academic calendar as the only athlete in the league to win a PSAC Top 10 award in all three competitive seasons. Her career total is now four.

Spence, Shippensburg's 2010-11 Women's Student-Athlete of the Year, currently boasts a 3.87 cumulative quality-point average through six semesters as a human communications studies major. Earlier this month, Spence was named to the 2010-11 Capital One Academic All-District Women's Track & Field First Team. Academic All-America/Cross Country selections will be announced next week.

This spring, Spence masterminded the RUN Club (Running Under Neely) for students at Grace B. Luhrs Elementary School on the Shippensburg University campus. The RUN Club was a 12-week track and field after school program developed and coordinated by Spence that sought to educate children about track & field while promoting healthy lifestyle habits in the process.

As an outdoor track & field competitor, Spence won her third consecutive 5K national championship from California State University Stanislaus with a time of 16:17.30. She is just the fourth female athlete in school history to be a three-time outdoor All-American in the same event, joining Emily Budnyk (10K), Kathy Stec (3K) and Tunisia Lacy (triple jump).

Spence was also named the 2011 PSAC Outdoor Track Athlete of the Year and the USTFCCCA Atlantic Region Women's Outdoor Track Athlete of the Year after winning three events at the PSAC outdoor championships. She was also named the overall meet MVP of the PSAC outdoor meet after first-place finishes in the 1,500, 3K and 5K.

In April, Spence broke the all-time Division II record in the 5K at the prestigious Mt. Sac Relays with a time of 15:33.83. She also improved her own conference record in the 3K at the Penn Relays with a victorious time of 9:10.82.

Through three years of indoor and outdoor track & field competition, Spence has won 17 PSAC championships in 19 total races. She has also been named the conference athlete of the year in all nine of her competitive seasons to date at Shippensburg.

Spence joins Kelly Stewart (2003-04) as the only athletes in school history to win all three PSAC Top 10 awards in one year.

It is the eighth consecutive competitive season that Shippensburg has had a PSAC Top 10 award winner. SU had three of its athletes receive PSAC Spring Top 10 awards; Spence was honored along with senior outdoor track athlete Bryan Beegle and junior outdoor track athlete Stephen Schelander.

With its three honorees on Friday, Shippensburg maintains the lead among league institutions with 47 career recipients of the PSAC Top 10 award. Clarion has 39 all-time honorees while Edinboro boasts 38. IUP, Slippery Rock and East Stroudsburg have totaled 37 award winners.

Shippensburg led the PSAC in 2010-11 with seven PSAC Top 10 awards spanning the fall, winter and spring. No other conference institution achieved more than four Top 10 awards during that time span.

The PSAC Top 10 awards were first granted in the fall of 1997.

Notes: Spence is now tied with former teammate Mary Dell (Boiling Springs, PA) with four career PSAC Top 10 awards, the most by any athlete in SU history…Spence (5K) and Dell (3K steeplechase) will be in competition next week at the 2011 USATF Championships in Eugene, Oregon.