Mejia Honored with Michelle Antoinette Hamdan Memorial Award

NEW YORK, May 4, 2005 -- Long Island University's Krystal Mejia will be awarded the Michelle Antoinette Hamdan Memorial Award tonight at LIU. The 2004 Northeast Conference Player of the Year in softball suffered a shoulder cartilage tear this season, but postponed her surgery to help the Blackbirds defend their NEC Championship. The junior shortstop is expected to be on the field for LIU's 10th consecutive NEC Tournament appearance next week.

The award has been established in memory of Michelle Antoinette Hamdan, daughter of LIU's former head athletic trainer and former assistant athletic trainer of the New York Knicks, Said Hamdan and his wife, Denise. Their daughter was stricken by an undetected, congenital heart defect and died on Feb. 8, 1991 just days after her birth on Jan. 30, 1991.