The University of Maine’s track and field family lost one of its more courageous members this week.
Carly Bunyan, who captained coach Mark Lech’s Black Bears over the 2005-06 season, died at her home in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, after a tough fight with brain cancer.
Bunyan, a four-year letterwinner who graduated from UMaine in 2006, was only 26.
After a solid high school career at SAERC High School in Nova Scotia, from which Bunyan graduated in 2000, she accepted an athletic scholarship to Maine, but a short time later, tragedy struck.
During her sophomore year at UMaine, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, but she did not give up.
She eventually returned to the Black Bears and, in 2005, received the NCAA’s prestigious Wilma Rudolph Student-Athlete Achievement Award, the only non-American to garner the honor.
The award is presented to student-athletes who overcame personal, academic and/or emotional odds to achieve success both academically and athletically.
In addition to Bunyan’s success on the track for Maine, where she competed in the jumping events with her signature event being the triple jump, she was also a bright presence in the classroom. The anthropology major was a Maine Scholar-Athlete Award winner and was named to the America East Academic Honor Roll.
Bunyan also represented her country well on the track.
Bunyan participated in two Canada Summer Games, the first in London, Ontario, in 2001 and the second in Regina, Saskatchewan, in 2005.
In fact, her Nova Scotia teammates unanimously voted Bunyan as the province’s flag bearer for the closing ceremonies of the 2005 Summer Games.
Bunyan was also an honorary chair for the Relay for Life in 2007 and gave inspirational speeches at a number of events.
Online condolences may be made at www.haverstocks.com.
