• Winthrop won the Big South Conference’s Team Sportsmanship Award for softball.  The honor marks Winthrop’s first-ever Big South team sportsmanship award in the two years of the conference’s sportsmanship program. The Lady Eagles, coached by Mark Cooke, won the 2007 Big South softball tournament title, set 17 records including most wins with a 50-18 record and made their first NCAA Regional appearance.

• The S.C. Arts Commission selected Beth Melton `03 for a visual arts fellowship award for 2007-08. The Rock Hill native is enrolled part-time in the master of fine arts program and teaches weaving. Ceramics professor Jim Connell was picked as an alternate in the crafts division. Pictured here is Melton’s work in the S.C. State Museum in Columbia called “Encounter Past Present.”

• Junior track and field standouts Kandrick Cooper and Jason Williams became the first two Winthrop male track athletes to earn NCAA All-Region honors in school history following the regional meet in May at the University of Florida. Cooper, a hurdler, secured an eighth-place finish, while Williams, a high jumper, finished in seventh place in his first NCAA Regional.

• Jennifer Belk, assistant professor of interior design, was selected as a Link Leading Lady through 107.9FM in Charlotte for June 15. The program honors women who embody strength, compassion and integrity and are making a difference in their community. Listen to the interview.

• Former Eagle pitching standout Kevin Slowey `06 made his major league debut on June 1 for the Minnesota Twins’ game against Oakland. He was 3-0 in seven starts for the Twins before being sent back to Class AAA Rochester.

• In space news, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Mission is naming some geological features after former members of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. One of the more prominent features of the planet is named after Winthrop’s Elizabeth ‘Lib’ Mahon `42, a Greenville, S.C. native who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (subject of the 1992 feature film, A League of Their Own). The “Spirit” Mars Rover is studying geological objects at a site on Mars known as “Home Plate.”