GREENSBORO, N.C.— Led by fourth and seventh place finishes on the 3-meter diving board from sophomores Kelsey Vreeman and Brittany Dixon, the Colorado Mesa University Maverick swimming and diving team had a strong first day at the NCAA Division II National Championships, which got underway Wednesday here at the Greensboro Aquatic Center.
 
Vreeman scored 472.00 points in the finals and earned the distinction of being the highest finishing Maverick women's diver at the national meet.  She also earned her third overall and second first team all-America certificate after finishing sixth on the 3-meter and 15^th on the 1-meter board a year ago.
 
Dixon, who scored 463.30 points earned her first career all-America honor after just missing out with a  17^th place finish on the 3-meter board last year.  She also took 18^th on the 1-meter in 2017. 
 
With the 27 team points that the duo scored, the Maverick women are in 15th place in the team standings through five events and one day.
 
The Maverick men are tied for 19^th with eight points after Josh Bedford and the 200-yard medley relay team of Eric Berg, Bedford, Chris Radomski and Sky Hirsch earned second team all-America accolades with their 13^th and 15th place finishes, respectively.
 
Bedford, a senior, posted a time of 1 minute, 49.61 seconds in the 200 individual medley during the evening finals session and with his two from Wednesday, now has seven career all-America certificates to his credit.  He had posted a slightly quicker time of 1:48.67 in the preliminaries.
 
In the session-capping relay, the Mavericks posted a time of 1:29.61 as Berg swam the backstroke leg in 23.20 seconds before Bedford posted a 24.86 second breaststroke relay split.  Radomski's butterfly leg relay split was 21.48 seconds while Hirsch turned in a freestyle relay split of 20.07 seconds. 
 
The same quartet had posted a time of 1:29.39 to qualify 14^th out of the preliminaries.
 
Berg, a junior, is now a 3-time all-American while Radomski and Hirsch, both of whom are seniors, have four all-America certificates each.
 
Also in the preliminaries, Sierra Forbord broke the CMU record in the 50 free as she finished 28^th with a time of 25.58 seconds, 0.04 quicker than Sam White's former record of 25.62, set last season.
 
Sam Bryant and Torsten Rau also got their first action of the meet in the 1,000 freestyle.  Bryant took 24^th in the finals-only event with a time of 9:28.81 while Rau finished 28^th in 9:34.37.  Both of them swam during the morning session as only the top eight seeds contested the event during the evening.
 
The meet, which runs through Saturday, will resume at 10 a.m. EDT on Thursday with another preliminary session.