Bull Run Awards 2016: Best of this year's UB Spring Sports

This is the second year of the Bull Run Awards, which we started after the 2014-15 season, our first covering each and every UB team. As last year, the Awards will be spread out over five days, covering each of the three seasons and two day's worth of special awards:

Day 1 - Wednesday: Fall Sports
Day 2 - Thursday: Winter Sports
Day 3 - Friday: Spring Sports
Day 4 - Saturday: Coach of the Year, Men's and Women's Rookie of the Year, Clutch Moment of the Year
Day 5 - Sunday: Team of the Year, Men's Overall Bull of the Year, Women's Overall Bull of the Year

Spring Sports

Baseball - Vinny Mallaro

Consistency was hard to come by for the baseball team this year, but a name that consistently produced, at an elite level was Vinny Mallaro. Mallaro led the team in home runs with 13, RBIs with an astounding 52, and was second in hits with 66. The team won 7 of their last 10 games and Mallaro was a big reason why. In that stretch he hit 8 home runs and hammered home 21 runs. For his efforts, Mallaro was named the Louisville Slugger National Player of the Week, was named to the first-team All-MAC squad along with serious talk of being drafted in this weekend's MLB draft.

Runners-up Alec Tuohy, Mike Abrunzo and Bobby Sheppard made strong cases but ultimately Mallaro was a more consistent bat throughout the season and his amazing stretch to end the year gave him the nod.

- John McWhinnie

Honorable Mention: Alec Tuohy, Mike Abrunzo, Bobby Sheppard**

**2015 Honorable Mention

Softtball - Katie Weimer

Weimer was not the most highly-touted freshman coming into this year, but as the reigning NYS Class AA Player of the Year, maybe she should have been. Weimer absolutely burst onto the scene in late February and never looked back, ultimately breaking Breanne Nasti's single-season RBI record while also hitting .329 and 12 homers, the latter good for second all-time at UB. Of course, the record would have been impossible without the work of First Team All-MAC Savanna Norcio and her .382 batting average. -Matt Gritzmacher

Honorable Mention: Savanna Norcio**, Charlotte Miller

**2015 Honorable Mention

Men's Tennis - Sergio Arevalillo**

The hero of last season's MAC Championship squad returned for his senior season and provided the most consistent racket for the Men's Tennis team. Arevalillo earned a combined 41 wins between singles and doubles play and led the team in singles wins with 24, the only Bull to break the 20 win plateau. For his efforts Arevalillo was the only Bull named to the All-MAC first team. - John McWhinnie

Honorable Mention: Amar Hromic, Pablo Alvarez*, Akhil Mehta

*2015 Winner **2015 Honorable Mention

Women's Tennis - Tanja Stojanovska*

Women's Tennis is poised for a big breakthrough next year after nearly upsetting #1 seed Ball State in the MAC Tournament, and you only need to look to the stats page to see it, as four different Bulls, none of whom are graduating, tallied 20+ singles wins on the year (14-7 in the spring, 24-9 overall). For the second straight year, the squad was led by the sophomore Stojanovska, who was a mainstay at first singles while also piling up a 22-6 record in doubles, and highlighted her year with a 6-0, 6-3 postseason dismantling of Akron's MAC Player of the Year Ariadna Blinova. With two full years remaining, she's got a good shot at catching Andreea Novaceanu as the winningest Bull of all time. - Matt Gritzmacher

Honorable Mention: Sanjana Sudhir, Laura Holterbosch**, Chantal Martinez-Blanco

*2015 Winner **2015 Honorable Mention

Men's Track and Field - Ryan Cribbin

Following in the footsteps of last year's winner and overall Bull of the Year, Jon Jones, Ryan Cribbin earned this season's award after a solid season as the MAC's top thrower. Cribbin easily won the MAC title in the shot put with a heave of 18.17 meters, claiming UB's 14th of the last 16 MAC titles between the indoor and outdoor seasons. In a season where several other key members of the outdoor track and field squad redshirted or were injured Cribbin was the obvious choice given his dominance.

Darien Johnson and Brian Crimmins both tallied school records indoors, and John McCarthy came up big during the roster-depleted spring.- John McWhinnie

Honorable Mention: Darien Johnson, Brian Crimmins, John McCarthy

Women's Track and Field - Malayah White

It comes down to records and MAC Championships, and White brough both more than anyone else on the track this year. White set new school marks both indoors (in the 60m dash) and outdoors (in the 100m and as part of the 4X200m relay), and claiming the conference mark in the 60m. - Matt Gritzmacher

Honorable Mention: Amy Shaw

Rowing - Varsity 4

To the extent that we can build storylines around rowing, the Varsity 4 was UB's strongest this year, narrowly missing third place at the CAA Championships with a boat of Caeleigh Heavey, Elle Good, Elizabeth Shilling, Hayley Nieves and Ankita Kelkar, but also beat Eastern Michigan in the Harvey Cup and had strong showings (7th and 11th) at the Head of the Occoquan and Head of the Housatonic in the fall season. - Matt Gritzmacher

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Congrats to the honorees on great seasons! Stay tuned tomorrow for Coach of the Year, Rookies of the Year, and Clutch Moment of the Year!