Beloit College

A distance runner who came to Beloit from Kalamazoo, Michigan, with impressive high school athletic credentials, Michele Belvitch Erikson helped develop the College’s track and cross country programs for women while winning Midwest Conference championships in both sports.  She captured the league’s 1,500-and 3,000-meter track events in record-setting times as a junior and the cross country crown as a senior, when she was the Buccaneer women’s top performer in each meet. Despite injuries in 1984, she still managed to place third and fourth in the conference 3,000 and 1,500 events.  Her time of 11:04.26 in the 3,000 remains a school record.  Twice captain in both sports, she won the Ruth Colman Peterson Award as the outstanding senior-woman student-athlete and was among 60 NCAA runners to participate in the ’84 International Sports Exchange in New Zealand.  In 1992, competing in the prestigious New York City Marathon, Erikson was the first Wisconsin woman to finish, covering the course in 3:44 and placing 607th in the field of 5,301 women; overall she was 8,643rd of the 27,488 who completed the event.  Married to alumnus John Erikson, the mother of two sons and a participant in the Chicago and Lake Geneva marathons, she has earned civic recognition as a volunteer for, and president of, the Stateline Literacy and Badger Girl Scout councils.