SoCon announces 1996-97 athletes of the year
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MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. -- The Southern Conference announced its Athlete-of-the-Year recipients at the Southern Conference honors dinner Tuesday night at the Wachesaw Plantation County Club, held in conjunction with the league’s annual spring meeting.
Chattanooga’s Mary Jane Middelkoop was named the Female Athlete-of-the-Year after winning two conference titles and five all-conference selections in track & field and cross country this year. Appalachian State’s Dexter Coakley, two-time Buck Buchannan Award recipient and three-time SoCon football Defensive Player-of-the-Year, repeated the selection for the Bob Waters Award as the Male Athlete-of-the-Year.
Mary Jane Middelkoop, a junior at Chattanooga, has already claimed nine championships in track & field and is a three-time all-conference selection in cross country. This season, Middelkoop won the indoor 3,000 meters and the outdoor 5,000 meters. She also finished third in the indoor 5,000 meters and second in the outdoor 3,000 meters, while placing sixth place at the 1996 Southern Conference Cross Country Championships. Middelkoop, who has never placed below third in a track & field distance event, owns nine school records.
Middelkoop carries a 3.81 GPA as a double major in environmental science and biology. She is a six-time Dean’s List selection and has been named to the Beta Beta Beta Biology Honor Society, the Golden Key National Honor Society and Who's Who at UT-Chattanooga (1996 and 1997). She volunteers for the Chattanooga Special Olympics, the Chattanooga Kids' Kaleidoscope Festival, the Mary Walker Run For Literacy, the Big Oak Ranch Children's Home, the YMCA Invitational Scholarship Campaign, the Chattanooga Food Bank, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Chattanooga Habitat For Humanity. Middelkoop also speaks at local elementary and middle schools and serves as the secretary of the UTC Student-Athlete Council.
Senior linebacker Dexter Coakley becomes just the seventh repeat winner of the Southern Conference’s Male Athlete-Of-the-Year award in the 50 years of the honor. A three-time selection as the league’s defensive player-of-the-year in football, Coakley has also won the Buck Buchannan Award for the last two seasons. The third-round pick of the Dallas Cowboys in the 1997 NFL Draft was a consensus I-AA All-America choice in both 1995 and 1996.
In the 1996 season, Coakley led the league with 15.1 tackles per game with 166 stops on the year and was the defensive Player-of-the-Week three times. He also finishes his career as the league’s leading tackler with 645 stops. Coakley participated in the Blue-Gray All Star Classic and the East-West Shrine Game, earning the Gray team’s defensive player-of-the-game after the Blue-Gray All Star Classic. Coakley is a communications/advertising major with a 2.97 grade point average. He has volunteered with Ski Special Olympics, local food drives for the needy and as a volunteer campus speaker for secondary school visitors on campus.