Wilmington native Celia Kulis enjoyed a record-breaking season at Holy Cross this spring. She set two school records. 

Competing at the NEICAAA Outdoor Cham­pionship last month at UMass Amherst, the junior eclipsed the 100-meter hur­dles school record (13.66) to take second place at the event.

And after another school record performance — Ku­lis broke her own school record in the heptathlon at the Patriot League Out­door Championship by 353 points — she was named to the Second Team All-Pa­­triot League team.

Kulis placed second, posting 5,006 points. 

Baseball

Senior Tristan Ciampa made six appearances for UMass Boston (25-17) this spring, tossing 28.2 inn­ings and recording a 3.45 ERA. Posting a 2-1 rec­ord, perhaps his best outing came in an eight-strikeout gem against Ply­mouth State, where he scattered five hits in 7.1 innings en route to the win. Ciampa held the oppo­si­tion to a mere .214 batting average this season. 

At Franklin Pierce, fresh­­man Jacob Roque played in 19 games in his rookie campaign.

He hit .178, driving in five runs while stealing four bases. The Ravens fin­­ished the spring 35-22, advancing all the way to the NCAA Super Regional.

Men’s lacrosse

At Seton Hill, junior Ga­vin Erickson notched 31 points on 17 goals and 14 assists as the Griffins turn­­ed in an 18-2 season. Erick­son tallied a helper in Se­ton Hill’s 9-8 loss to Saint Anselm in the NCAA tournament after winning the G-MAC title.

In his freshman season at Franklin Pierce, Mi­chael Lawler posted four goals and eight assists for 12 points. In a 13-8 win over American Interna­tional on March 26, Law­ler erupted for two goals and two assists.

Bobby Cyr scored a goal for Embry-Riddle in his rookie season, starting in all 16 games.

Women’s lacrosse

Senior Shannon Murphy capped off a storied four-year career at Colorado Me­sa University between the pipes.

In four seasons, she ap­peared in 54 games and made 312 saves while boas­ting a 31-19 record. She made 15 saves in four games this season and entered this spring rank­ed second in program history in goalie wins.

Men’s track and field

Senior Patrick O’Mahony competed in one outdoor meet for Bryant this season, posting a 4:24.89 in the 1,500m at the Black and Gold Invitational. In the indoor season, he netted a personal best 4:30.32 in the mile at the America East Championships.

At Assumption, junior Col­by Medeiros finished fourth in the 800 (1:55.22) at the Northeast-10 Confer­­ence Outdoor Champion­ships last month. Assump­tion placed fourth as a team. At the Jack Maloney/Jim Barber Invitational, he netted a 1:55.08 in the event for first place.

Women’s track and field

At Springfield, junior Ma­dison Mulas placed fifth in the 100-meter dash (13.49) at the SC Outdoor Classic to have a hand in Spring­field’s team title at the event in April. At the NEWMAC Champion­ships, Mulas played a role in a third-place finish in the 4×100-meter relay (49.52).

A pair of Wilmington run­­ners made splashes at UVM. Junior Shea Cushing posted a fifth-place finish at the UMass Pre-Confer­ence Meet in the 5000, while junior Carmella Thomp­son came in third in discus at the George Da­vis Invitational. 

At Stonehill, freshman Mollie Osgood placed sixth in the high jump (1.57m) to claim points for the Sky­hawks at the North­east Conference Outdoor Cham­pionships. At the Ken O’Bri­en Pre-Conference Meet, Os­good came in fifth (1.53m). She set her personal best outdoor score (1.58m) earlier in the season at the Merrimack Col­lege Alumni Classic.

NORTHRIDGE, Calif.—CSUN Women’s Soccer head coach Gina Brewer as announced the 2025 schedule featuring nine home matches at Matador Soccer Field and three NCAA Tournament teams on the docket.
 
“We are excited for the 2025 season,” said Brewer. “We’ve scheduled some opponents who we know will be challenging and prepare us for the Big West. Saint Mary’s, Grand Canyon, California Baptist and Portland will all be extremely competitive games and we look forward to being tested, so we are ready to go when conference games start.”
 
Prior to the start of the regular season. The Matadors will host an exhibition match with Trinity Western University on Thursday, Aug. 7.
 
The 2025 season officially opens on Thursday, Aug. 14 with a road match at Saint Mary’s before CSUN heads to San Jose State on Aug. 17.
 
CSUN opens a three-match homestand beginning Thursday, Aug. 21 against Grand Canyon in the 2025 home opener. Three days later, the Matadors continue their homestand with a matchup with a California Baptist team that won the WAC championship and advanced to the NCAA Tournament in 2024. CSUN then wraps up the home stretch with Utah Tech on Aug. 28.
 
The Matadors make the trip to the San Diego on Aug. 31 to take on the Toreros before traveling up north the following week for road tilts at Portland State (Sept. 4) and Portland (Sept. 7). CSUN’s last non-conference matchup is set with future Big West team Sacramento State on Thursday, Sept. 11. The Hornets also played in the NCAA Tournament a season ago after winning the Big Sky Tournament.
 
Big West play kicks off on Sunday, Sept. 21 when the Matadors visit Cal State Fullerton. A week later, CSUN hosts its first two conference matches against UC Irvine (Sept. 25) and UC Riverside (Sept. 28).
 
The month of October kicks off with a road contest at UC San Diego (Oct. 5) while CSUN returns home for meeting with Cal State Bakersfield on Oct. 12. From there, the Matadors make the trek to Hawai’i on Oct. 16.
 
The second half of the Big West season includes a home meeting with UC Davis (Oct. 19) as well as a matchup with defending Big West champion UC Santa Barbara (Oct. 23. After a final road match at Cal Poly on Oct. 26, CSUN hosts Senior Night on Thursday, Oct. 30 against Long Beach State.
 
The 2025 Big West Women’s Soccer Championship kicks off on Sunday, Nov. 2 while semifinal matches will be held on Nov. 6 and the championship match is scheduled for Nov. 9.
 
#GoMatadors
 

A Chinese track and field sprinter has scored a staggering 462 in the national college entrance exam, or gaokao, earning her a place in the country’s top universities.

Liu Xiajun, 19, took the gaokao for the second time earlier this month after her score last summer fell short of admission to the country’s best school, Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Liu, who is from the city of Ziyang in southwest China’s Sichuan province, rejected an offer from the prestigious Fudan University in Shanghai in 2024, considered China’s second best, to chase a spot at the institution in Beijing.

“I was very surprised [when I got my results] and asked my teacher: ‘Is there a mistake in the results?’,” Liu said.

“I believe that the most important factor in achieving such results before entering formal education is perseverance.

“Despite the immense pressure of resitting the exam, you cannot think about giving up.

Arizona volleyball head coach Rita Stubbs and her staff secured their second commitment for the class of 2027 this week. Outside hitter Asia Udo-Ema attended Arizona’s camp just before the commitment period opened. She announced her commitment to the program on Thursday evening.

Prep Dig has Udo-Ema as the No. 18 player in the country in their national rankings. She is the No. 8 player in California and the No. 4 outside hitter, according to the outlet. VB Adrenaline has her at No. 35 in the 2027 class based on its rating system. Prep Volleyball noted her in its write-up of the standout players on the second day of the Triple Crown NIT last February.

The 6-foot native of Riverside, Calif. plays club volleyball for Forza 1 North. Her highlights can be found on her HUDL account.

Udo-Ema is no stranger to the Wildcats. She is close to former Arizona men’s basketball players Gabe York and Carter Bryant.

York was one of the people she contacted when she decided to commit to the Wildcats, and she refers to him as her godfather in her social media posts. Bryant reached out to congratulate her on social media. Bryant attended Corona (CA) Centennial High School, where Udo-Ema is entering her junior year.

Udo-Ema played 184 sets in her freshman and sophomore seasons and has been very consistent in her stats. All of her numbers improved her sophomore season, but they were not dramatically outside the range she showed her rookie year. She averages 4.3 kills per set with a .440 kill percentage and a .326 hitting percentage.

She has been a consistent server with an ace rate of 13.9 percent and 0.5 aces per set. On the defensive side, she averages 0.3 blocks per set and 6.8 digs per set. In serve receive, she has 93 reception errors in 1,013 attempts. She receives the serve 5.5 times per set.

Udo-Ema joins setter Tinsley Welker out of the Houston area as Arizona’s two known commits for 2027. Welker is ranked as the No. 50 player in the 2027 class by Prep Dig and a three-star recruit by Prep Volleyball.

Lead photo by Mike Christy / Arizona Athletics

Bill Dellinger, Olympic bronze medalist in the 5,000 meters, mentor to the legendary Steve Prefontaine, and for more than 30 years a winning University of Oregon coach, died on June 27 at age 91.

Dellinger was an outsider in the star-studded 5,000-meter final at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, but he coped with the rain-soaked cinder track, the wildly varying pace, and the mass sprint on the final lap to emerge as a surprise bronze medalist, while Bob Schul even more dramatically won gold. Ralph Hill (silver, 1932), Paul Chelimo (silver 2016, bronze 2020), and Grant Fisher (bronze, 2024) are the other Americans to medal at that distance.

In a very different crisis, the terrorist siege and massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Dellinger showed the same cool judgment under pressure. As coach to Prefontaine, he took the distraught 21-year-old into his own accommodation, and then drove him out of the city for a day of calm privacy, enabling him to reorient for the fraught 5,000-meter final. Prefontaine narrowly missed a medal, but it was Dellinger who put him in a position to challenge as unforgettably as he did.

Bill (William Cornelius) Dellinger was a lifelong contributor to the sport of running, who needs to be defined by more than his connections to Prefontaine and Bill Bowerman. A committed man of Oregon, he was born in Grants Pass. In ninth grade in Springfield, his running ability caught not only the coach’s eye, but that of future novelist Ken Kesey, who recalled watching him from the school bus, “running to school instead of riding, rain or shine, the very sort of nut you’d expect to win the state cross-country title” (as retold by Kenny Moore in Bowerman and the Men of Oregon).

As a sophomore at the University of Oregon, early in Bowerman’s coaching regime, Dellinger first showed his ability to pull a surprise success under pressure, when he was the unexpected winner of the NCAA 1-mile title in 1954. Bowerman described that as “my greatest and most satisfying experience.” Dellinger went on to be a three-time All-American, won every collegiate cross-country race, placed second and first in the next NCAA track finals, and won the U.S. Olympic Trials 5,000 in an American record, to qualify for the 1956 Olympics.

Bob Schul (left) and Bill Dellinger display their medals after winning gold and bronze at 5,000 meters in the 1964 Olympics.

That year he also graduated (with a major in education), married his wife, Marol, and lowered the U.S. 5,000 record three times, to 14:16.2. But in Melbourne’s extreme heat he failed to finish the Olympic race. The failure deepened his resolve. He had joined the Air Force, and while posted to a radar station in Washington state, he spent the next year training solo twice a day on a remote Olympic Peninsula beach, counting strides to estimate track distances. That made him one of the first American track runners to persist at a world-class level after leaving college. His rewards included more American records, at 1500 meters (3:41.5), and world records at two and three miles indoors (8:49.9, 13:37.0).

One of his finest moments was a race when he fearlessly challenged the top Soviets in a tense U.S.S.R.-U.S.A. dual meet in Moscow, at the height of the Cold War, marginally losing the race (in the same time as the winner), but winning a standing ovation from the Russian crowd.

His second Olympics, Rome 1960, were another disappointment, but Dellinger was now a teacher and coach at Springfield’s Thurston High School, and came back under the direct guidance of Bowerman. In his third Olympics, in 1964, he got it right. It was Dellinger’s sudden attack with 600 meters to go that ignited the race. He kept fighting as more fancied runners faded. He grabbed third from France’s Michel Jazy in the last strides, in 13:49.8, his outdoors personal record, despite the adverse conditions and disruptive tactics.

He then retired to coach at Lane Community College, until in 1967 he was hired as Bowerman’s assistant at Oregon. He took over as cross-country head coach in 1969, the freshman year of the phenom Prefontaine. Dellinger took most of the responsibility for the development of that passionate and complex young man, and deserves credit for his success. Their relationship and behavior together was often said to be (as Moore writes in Bowerman) “like brothers.”

Dellinger faced his greatest personal challenge when Prefontaine was killed in a car wreck in 1975. Moore comments, “Dellinger was so shaken by Pre’s death that he doubted he could ever grow personally close to an athlete again.” He had succeeded Bowerman as head coach in 1973, vowing to continue his legacy, though always more reserved and thoughtful and less egotistic in style. Tension arose when Dellinger became affiliated with Adidas, designing a shock-absorbing road shoe that was in competition with Bowerman’s Nike waffle shoes. Another problem was Bowerman’s disinclination to give Dellinger credit for Prefontaine’s development. The breach was eventually healed on Dellinger’s initiative. Moore describes him as a man with a strong sense of justice who remembered his indebtedness to his former mentor. Tom Jordan, author of Pre, acknowledged Dellinger’s “always honest remembrances.”

As Oregon’s head track and field coach from 1973 to 1998, Dellinger played a significant part in coaching Olympians Alberto Salazar, Rudy Chapa, Matt Centrowitz Sr., and other major running talents, including some post-collegiates like Olympic marathoner Ron Tabb. He guided Oregon to four NCAA cross-country team championships, with five second places, and four thirds; and to the NCAA track and field outdoor championship in 1984. He guided 108 All-Americans. His straightforward style proved apt for the often rebellious university culture of the 1970s, as well as the administrative and fund-raising aspects of the coach’s duties. He retired in 1998 because of a prostate issue.

Dellinger was distance coach for the USA Olympic team in 1984. In 2001, he was inducted into the USATF Hall of Fame and the National Distance Running Hall of Fame. USA Track & Field gave him the Legend Coach Award, and he was inducted into the Collegiate Coaching Hall of Fame. He is honored by the annual inter-collegiate Bill Dellinger Invitational Cross-Country race in Springfield, Oregon. He suffered a stroke in 2000, but resumed some individual coaching. He had surgery for a stomach tumor in 2012.

In the 1997 movie Prefontaine, Dellinger’s character was played by Ed O’Neill, and in Without Limits (also the Prefontaine story, 1998) by Dean Norris. A short documentary, The Magician, was released in 2018. Tinker Hatfield of Nike, who was coached by him, said that Dellinger will in time be regarded not only as Bowerman’s heir, but as his equal.

But his full legacy is wholly his own. As an athlete, Dellinger was a record-breaking leader in America for eight years, and he won an Olympic bronze medal in one of history’s great races. As a coach, his life’s work earned him adulation in his last years whenever he appeared at any Oregon event, and the tributes of a large following of admirers on social media on every birthday.

Roger Robinson is a highly-regarded writer and historian and author of seven books on running. His recent Running Throughout Time: the Greatest Running Stories Ever Told has been acclaimed as one of the best ever published. Roger was a senior writer for Running Times and is a frequent Runner’s World contributor, admired for his insightful obituaries. A lifetime elite runner, he represented England and New Zealand at the world level, set age-group marathon records in Boston and New York, and now runs top 80-plus times on two knee replacements. He is Emeritus Professor of English at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and is married to women’s running pioneer Kathrine Switzer.