CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Liberty’s Sam Chelanga and Donnie Cowart of VMI have been named the 2008-09 Men’s Track and Field Co-Athlete of the Year, while the Charleston Southern Women’s 4x100-meter relay team of Dionne  Gibson, Jessica Thomas, Misha Morris and Gabrielle Houston was named the Women’s Track and Field Athletes of the Year. The male and female Track & Field Athlete of the Year is an annual award voted on by the League’s Head Track and Field Coaches at their annual June meeting.

Chelanga, a redshirt sophomore from Nairobi, Kenya, finished a stellar 2008-09 campaign with two second-place national finishes and one third-place finish at NCAA Championships this season.  He kicked his year off with a second-place finish at the 2008 NCAA Cross Country Championship and followed with a second-place finish in the 5K at the 2009 NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championship.  He rounded his season out with a third-place in the 10,000-meter event at the 2009 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championship.  During the indoor season, Chelanga posted the second-fastest 5K time in NCAA history with a finish of 13:19.79.  He set the NCAA record in the outdoor 10K as he clocked in at 27:28.48.  He picked up three All-American honors during the 2008-09 running seasons to bring his career total to five All-American nods.  He claimed the Big South cross country crown and took first in the indoor mile and outdoor 5K.  During the cross country, indoor track and field and outdoor track and field seasons, he only lost to two collegiate runners in Oregon’s Galen Rupp and Arkansas’s Shawn Forrest.

Cowart, a redshirt senior from Rustburg, Va., highlighted his VMI career as he picked up All-American honors with a 12th-place in the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the 2009 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships.  Earlier in the NCAA meet, Cowart broke a 31 year-old VMI record by five seconds as he clocked in at 8:44.66 to earn a berth in the finals of the 3,000-meter steeplechase.  During the outdoor season, Cowart earned his first-ever Big South individual title as he claimed the 3,000-meter steeplechase crown, while finishing second in the 1,500-meter event and third in the 800-meters.  During the 2008-09 Big South indoor track and field championship, he was named the Big South’s Most Outstanding Track Performer as he finished No. 2 in the 800, second in the mile and third in the 5K.  He also led his distance medley team to a No. 1 finish.

The Charleston Southern women’s 4x100-meter relay team made Big South history during the 2009 campaign.  The quartet became the League’s first-ever relay team to earn a bid to nationals and earn All-American accolades.  The team of Gibson, Thomas, Morris and Houston posted its fastest time of the season as the team finished in a Big South record time of 44.35 in the semifinals of the 2009 NCAA Track and Field Championship.  In the finals, the team finished as the 8th-best 4x100-meter relay team in the nation with a time of 44.67 to earn All-American honors.  Gibson, the team’s only senior, also competed at the NCAA nationals as she qualified as an at-large selection in the 200-meter event.

Honorable mentions for the men included Winthrop’s Kandrick Cooper and Jacques Watson of Coastal Carolina, while Coastal Carolina’s Ikeiylah Brown and High Point’s Zsanett Kis earned honorable mentions for the women.