Three Muhlenberg athletes were ranked among the national leaders in their sports through contests of Sunday, January 12.

Freshman Dale Mills of the wrestling team ranked second in Division III in reversals with 23 in 23 matches. He also was tied for seventh in near-falls with an average of 1.04 per match. After his win against Scranton on Tuesday, Mills has a record of 19-5 and needs one more win to become the first Mule freshman since 1999 to have a 20-win season.

In men’s basketball, senior Aaron Holden ranked 13th in Division III in blocked shots per game (2.6) and senior Anthony Strachan was 15th at 3.2 steals per game. Holden has moved into fifth place on the Mules’ all-time list with 84 career blocked shots, and he needs two more to move into fourth place. Strachan is closing in on the school record for career steals: He has 154, and the record is 158, held by Dennis Adams (1991-94).

Muhlenberg women’s basketball senior captains Randi Baran and Meg Malatack (below) have been selected to attend the Centennial Conference’s Fourth Annual Snell-Shillingford Coaching Symposium, hosted by Bryn Mawr College beginning tomorrow.

The Symposium is a weekend affair where female undergraduates from the 11 Centennial Conference colleges come together for seminars on various issues pertaining to coaching and the area of athletics.

Based on findings in the Longitudinal Study of Women in Intercollegiate Sport by R. Vivian Acosta and Linda Jean Carpenter, the percentage of women coaches on the college level has been declining steadily since 1984. In response to those numbers, Jen Shillingford, former director of athletics at Bryn Mawr, created the symposium in 1999 as the Snell Coaching Symposium to encourage women undergraduates to enter the field of coaching.

Following Shillingford’s retirement as the director of the event, the symposium was renamed the Snell-Shillingford Coaching Symposium to honor her contributions to women’s athletics. Symposium participants are given the opportunity to speak with a panel of mentors, recent graduates, graduate assistants and key women in the field of athletics. This year’s guest speakers include Shillingford; Charlotte West, former president of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women and former associate athletic director at Southern Illinois University; Tracey Belbin, the current National Field Hockey Team coach; and Christine Grant, former women’s athletic director at the University of Iowa.

Over the first three years of the symposium, data has shown that 50 percent of participants have gone on to coach on a variety of levels.