COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.— Colorado Mesa University redshirt sophomore Ian Cropp has been named as the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference's Summit Award winner for the 2020 men's cross country season, it was announced by conference officials on Thursday afternoon.
 
Three different Mavericks have now combined to win the award for four consecutive seasons.
 
Cropp will officially receive the award during the post-meet awards ceremony at Saturday's Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Championships in Colorado Springs.   The men's 8-kilometer race will begin at 9:30 a.m. with the women's 6K race to follow at 10:15 a.m.
 
The RMAC Summit Awards are given to the student-athlete with the highest grade point average competing at each conference championship event.  Ties are broken by the number of credits completed.
 
To be eligible for the award, student-athletes must be a sophomore or above, who participated in their sport for at least two years with their school. Graduate students are not eligible.
 
A native of Topeka, Kansas, Cropp holds a perfect 4.000 GPA and is majoring in secondary education with an emphasis in mathematics.  After redshirting in 2018, Cropp competed in all five of the Mavericks' meets last season while earning a spot on the RMAC All-Academic Honor Roll.  He has also competed in both of CMU's meets so far in 2020 and turned in an 8K PR time of 26:58.3 at the Maverick Invitational earlier this month.
 
He is a 2017 graduate of Washburn Rural High School.
 
CMU's Trevor Smith received the RMAC Summit Award in 2019 after Luke Spitz was the honoree in both 2017 and 2018.