COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.— The Colorado Mesa University volleyball team will begin what will certainly be an unusual season picked fourth in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference 2021 Spring Preseason Coaches' Poll, which was announced Tuesday by conference officials.
 
The Mavericks received 137 points in the poll, which asked 14 head coaches to rank their opposition 1-13 without voting for their own squad.
 
MSU Denver, which had five first place votes and Regis, which took a league-high six first place votes, jointly held the top spot with 158 points while the Colorado School of Mines took third in the poll with 151 points.  CSU Pueblo, which received 112 points rounded out the top five.
 
Additionally, the RMAC released Players to Watch, which were selected by member institutions.
 
The Mavericks players to watch are senior setter Ara Norwood and junior libero Kerstin Layman, who both received Honorable Mention All-RMAC recognition in the fall of 2019. 
 
Norwood, a native of Ridgway, was also an Honorable Mention All-RMAC pick as a sophomore in 2018, and has led the Mavericks in assists in each of the past two seasons.  She started 25 of the team's 27 matches last year as part of CMU's 6-2 attack, recording 633 assists.  She also had 208 digs and was tied for the team lead in service aces with 23 last season.  She also had six double-doubles and enters the spring with 1,336 career assists and 465 career digs.
 
Layman, who hails from Littleton, started all 27 of CMU's matches in 2019 and led the team in digs with 442, good for a 4.56 per set average that ranks her seventh in the RMAC.  She also had 13 service aces, tied for third most on the team, and 115 assists, third most on the squad in 2019.  She also registered 20 or more digs in seven different matches last season.
 
The Mavericks will begin the spring season on Sunday when they host the defending RMAC Champion Regis Rangers at 2 p.m. in Brownson Arena.  The Rangers went 29-5 overall and 17-1 in RMAC play during the fall of 2019, reaching the semifinals of the NCAA Division II Tournament.  They have been picked fifth in the recently-released AVCA Division II Coaches' Poll.  Mines was tabbed 19^th while MSU Denver is receiving votes in that poll.
 
In addition to the fact that it is played in the spring semester due to ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic, this season will also have a different conference-only scheduling format.  There will not be an NCAA Tournament.
 
The Mavericks will play one or two matches on one day per week through the end of the March.  Many of those will come at 3-team round-robin pods.   Eight teams will be selected for the RMAC Tournament, which will be held between April 8-11, after a week in the calendar, which has been reserved for any necessary make-up matches. 
 
In total, the Mavericks are slated play 13 RMAC matches, one against each other RMAC school.   Additionally, they have scheduled two other pod matches at Westminster and against Western for Jan. 30 in Salt Lake City.  Those two matches will not be counted in the conference standings.
 
This Sunday was originally scheduled to be a pod with New Mexico Highlands.  However, the Cowgirls have announced that they will not play this spring, which resulted in Sunday's affair being a single match.
 
CMU will play a total of five matches at home, hosting pods on Friday, Feb. 12 and Thursday, Mar. 4 as well.
 
Due to the possibility of teams playing an unequal number of matches, the qualification and seeding for the RMAC Tournament will be based on the Performance Indicator method.
 
Here is a quick rundown of how the PI works:

• Teams will earn points based on their opponent and whether they win or lose each week. The better the opponent, the more points a team will earn, win or lose.
• The breaks for opponents occur at .250, .500 and .750 winning percentages and can change all year long
• The chart can be seen here
• Once a team has their points, they will be divided by the number of matches that have been played this year to get their PI number.
• The highest PI will be the conference champion and will earn the right to host the RMAC Tournament