Jan. 4, 2017
By Megan Golden
NOTRE DAME, Ind. — The University of Notre Dame indoor track and field season is just underway, and graduate student Molly Seidel already is receiving national recognition. For the second consecutive season, Seidel has been named to the 2017 Bowerman Preseason Watch List.
Seidel, a four-time national champion, returned to Notre Dame this winter to compete during the indoor and outdoor track and field seasons. In 2016, she became the first Notre Dame track student-athlete — from the men’s or women’s side — to appear on the preseason watch list. No Irish student-athlete has won the award.
Seidel won national titles in the 3,000m and 5,000m indoor events in 2016. She raced to the program’s first individual track and field championship in the 2015 10,000m outdoor event and also was victorious in the 2015 NCAA Cross Country Championship 6K.
The Bowerman, named after former Oregon track and field head coach Bill Bowerman, is in its ninth year and is annually awarded to the nation’s top male and female track and field athlete. Bowerman played basketball and football at Oregon and eventually joined the track and field team as a sprinter. He later signed on as the school’s head coach, leading four teams to national championships and coaching 24 NCAA individual champions, 33 Olympians and 64 All-Americans.
Seidel and the Notre Dame track and field team return to action on January 14 at the Illini Classic (Champaign, Ill.).
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Megan Golden, athletics communications assistant director at the University of Notre Dame, has been part of the Fighting Irish athletics communications team since August of 2016. In her role, she coordinates all media efforts for the Notre Dame women’s lacrosse and cross country/track and field programs. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Golden is a 2014 graduate of Saint Mary’s College and former Irish women’s basketball manager. Prior to arriving at Notre Dame, she worked in public relations with the Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox.