ALBANY, N.Y. (May 6, 2020) – Junior cross country and track & field student-athlete Arielle Moheimani (Homer, NY / Homer) was awarded the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Student Excellence. She and Paige Keith were the two students selected from SUNY Delhi for this honor that recognizes SUNY students who have best demonstrated their integration of academic excellence with other aspects of their lives, such as leadership, campus involvement, athletics, career achievement, community service, or creative and performing arts. Only two students from SUNY Delhi are selected each year for this statewide honor.
Moheimani's road to the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Student Excellence has had many twists and turns over the last three years balancing her student-athlete career on the cross country and track & field programs with her major in Mechatronics. Her commitment taught her great time management skills and to take advantage of any free time to get a job done. To date, she has accomplished a 3.83 cumulative GPA, became a two-time USCAA Cross Country All-American, and was a NAC outdoor track & field champion in five events – 4x100 in 2018 and the 400m hurdles, 3000m steeplechase, 4x400 and 4x800 relay in 2019. Her four event wins in the latter helped the team to their first NAC team title.
"The time restriction I've had over the last three years has taught me the value of time management," recalled Moheimani. "Any free time I had was an opportunity to get work done. And having an outlet like the cross country and track & field teams was a great way to release energy. Our team is very positive and there are plenty of people to look up to. I'm also very grateful to have so many mentor figures both within my field of study and the athletics program. I go to Michael Miller for a lot of advice. He's solid and it's great to bounce ideas off of him. He always has the right things to say, especially when it comes to career development and job searching, which are so valuable to learn so early."
Moheimani arrived to SUNY Delhi with the intention of focusing on track and field and using cross country to get in shape, but she quickly started developing into a strong cross country runner as well. She quickly emerged as the team's lead runner as a freshman, earning the team's top finish at the USCAA National Championships. The Homer, NY native went on to finish on the USCAA All-American Second Team as a sophomore to help Delhi to its highest-ever finish at USCAA Nationals in third place, then surged to the First Team back in November to help the Broncos again place third. But it was this past fall that Moheimani said was her most challenging:
"I loaded up with credits during the fall. Some of my plans after graduating is going on to grad school to study medicine, so I wanted to take a few classes to get me ready. However, I found myself very stressed and tied down, my practices began to frustrate me, and I was dieting bad. But I started to think back to what Coach Munro constantly tells us: 'You're not busy, you're just inefficient.' I began to smooth out any rough patches I had and refocused. I recovered and finished the semester with over a 3.8 GPA. My favorite part of that was leading up to USCAA nationals. I had a lot of work to finish up on before heading down to Virginia. I was able to get it all done and while getting ready for the race, I set aside what I called a 'time of nothing' to clear my mind, decompress, and prepare to run. I ended up running my best race with a time of 23:52.28 and finishing sixth."
"I wish I could say that I taught Arielle so many of the traits she developed during her time as a Bronco, but that would be a big misstatement," said Coach Munro. "She comes from such a supportive home and was raised to step up in challenging scenarios. Most of all, she is able to take someone pushing her to do more and see it as a positive. It's been my goal as a coach to create a positive atmosphere where my athletes recognize the value of being more than just a student-athlete, with one of our team slogans being 'Refuse to Be Average.' Arielle personifies the selflessness we value."
Not only has Moheimani been a great student and athlete, but an active member of the community. She has volunteered and done so many things on campus, many that Coach Munro heard about from other people. One notable contribution was Moheimani volunteering to be a guest speaker at a program to expose girls to careers in science and engineering, a program she attended as a child that inspired her to go into the field she is studying. In perhaps the best summary of her, she felt it was important to give back, but knew it would conflict with a track meet. She worked with the coaches to enter events at times in the meet that would allow her to attend the conference and still get to the meet to compete for the team.
"I am so proud of Arielle and all that she has accomplished" added Munro, "but also very proud of the program that has a culture to promote and support these types of people. With all the things the program has accomplished in recent years, I think the thing I am most proud is the fact that we have had four Chancellors Award Recipients in the last five years. This is the highest honor a student can receive in the SUNY system and I think the fact that we have had so many is a reflection of the incredible quality of the people we have in the program."
