NEW ORLEANS -- After an historic indoor season, graduate student Kelty Oaster was named the United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) Mid-Atlantic Region Women's Track Athlete of the Year for the Elizabethtown College women's track & field team on Thursday.

Oaster was fast out of the gates to begin her indoor season in mid-January, running the school's second-best 800 meter time of 2:15.59 at the Cardinal Track & Field Classic where she took second.

She followed that up with a sub-minute 400m the next week at F&M on Jan. 25, going 59.05 to set a new Etown record and win her first race of the year.

At the Fastrack National Invite on Feb. 7, she flew to a new school and conference mile record of 4:55.98, her second straight victory.

She won again a day later, on Feb. 8, in the 3,000m at F&M's Blue & White Invitational in 10:26.64. Oaster had the Blue Jays' top times in the 400m, 800m, mile, and 3k.

Oaster record-breaking pace was only beginning as she became, at the time, the first in Landmark history (as well as Elizabethtown) to break 2:10 indoors in the 800 meters at Boston's David Hemery Valentine Invitational with her time of 2:09.46.

The Gettysburg, Pa. native won a pair of silvers at the Landmark Indoor Championships on March 1 in the 800 meters and mile. She went on to bronze in the 400m at the AARTFC Indoor Championships a week later at Ithaca College.

A qualifier in both the 400m and 800m for the NCAA Indoor Championships at Nazareth University, Oaster declared for the 800 meters with Division III's fifth-best time.

She ran 2:08.59 in the her preliminary on March 14 to break her own school record and a new conference record while automatically qualifying for the final.

In the final on March 15, Oaster got off the line to avoid traffic and maintained contact with the leaders. Around the final turn, Oaster overcame a sizeable gap and made it across the line first, in 2:07.70, to become the first-ever national champion for the women's program while once again setting new school and conference records, as well as a facility record for the Golisano Training Center.

She is also the first-ever track national champion for the Landmark Conference and first since Abigail Schaffer won the pole vault for Moravian in 2011. Oaster is the conference's third indoor national champ.

Oaster is the program's first Regional Track Athlete of the Year.