The NCAA News - Briefly in the News

August 17, 1997

When Leland Melvin was a student-athlete at the University of Richmond in the early 1980s, he divided his time between the football field and the chemistry lab.

The discipline he developed at Richmond may soon pay off in an out-of-this-world way. Melvin recently was chosen as one of only 25 NASA astronaut candidates, and he soon will begin NASA's elite training program.

"To me, it's the ideal job," Melvin told the Richmond-Times Dispatch. "I like the athletics side, the intellectual side, and the fact that you're part of a team in space. It's an extension of all the things I like rolled up into one."

Melvin is Richmond's career leader in receptions and receiving yards, and he caught a pass in each of the 39 games in which he played. He was a Division I-AA honorable mention all-American in 1984 and 1985, and he was selected by the NFL's Detroit Lions in the 11th round of the 1986 draft.

But a football career wasn't in the stars for Melvin, as he suffered a hamstring injury in training camp and was released. He later spent time with the Dallas Cowboys in the preseason, and he was with Toronto in the Canadian Football League before he hung up his cleats.

Melvin did graduate work in mechanical engineering at the University of Virginia and the University of Maryland, College Park, and he has spent the last nine years as a scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center. At Langley he has worked on improving the X-33, a reusable launch vehicle that will one day replace the space shuttle orbiter.

Melvin hopes one day to conduct experiments in space as a mission specialist aboard the space shuttle.

His astronaut training will include survival training on land and in water as well as intensive study of chemistry, mechanical engineering, astronomy, geology, electronics, mathematics and computers.

Barry Barnum, an associate director of athletics at Richmond, says Melvin will be up to the task. "He was a great athlete and unparalleled as a student. He also had charisma and maturity unusual for someone his age."

If he successfully completes the training program, which is at least a year long, Melvin will work for another three or four years in ground support before any possible space missions.

Catching the thrill

Central College (Iowa) junior Chris Douglass caught a taste of Major League Baseball excitement when he served as the catcher for the home-run derby held in conjunction with the all-star game at Coors Field in Denver.

Douglass, a native of Arvada, Colorado, is a two-year starting catcher for the Central (Iowa) baseball team. The Colorado Rockies knew Douglass was a college catcher because his mother, Therese Douglass, is an assistant to the vice-president of business operations for the club.

Douglass said he enjoyed the opportunity to visit with most of the sluggers.

"I knew Mark McGwire was big, but to see him from five feet, you get a sense of how big he really is," Douglass said.

"All of the players joked around a lot. I got to see a side of them few people get to see."

Next season it's back to Iowa Conference action for Douglass, who batted .230 with three home runs and 13 RBIs for the Dutch last year.

NASO expands Web site

The National Association of Sports Officials (NASO) recently expanded its Web page network, providing more than 100 pages of information, including reports of assaults on officials, a state-by-state breakdown on legislative activity pertaining to officials, the association's model legislation and important news releases.

The NASO site also features information about the association, its membership benefits and its insurance coverage.

Visitors to the Web site also can link to other sites, including the sites of NASO's sponsors. There's also a guest book where visitors may report assaults on officials in their community.

NASO's Web site can be found at naso@naso.org.

Number crunching

A comparison of selected Division I baseball statistics between 1997 and 1998:

199 -- 1998

Teams -- 273 -- 273

Avg. Games/Team -- 53.1