GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— For the first time in more than 14 months, the Colorado Mesa University volleyball team will take to the court for a match when they begin an unusual spring Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference season on Sunday in Brownson Arena.

Scheduled earlier in the week to play a single match at 2 p.m. against the defending RMAC Champion and pre-season co-favorite Regis University Rangers, the Mavericks will now play twice.  They will take on the Rangers in a RMAC match at 10 a.m. before facing CSU Pueblo in a non-conference affair at 4 p.m.  The Rangers, who are ranked fifth in the AVCA Division II Preseason Coaches' Poll, and ThunderWolves will also play each other in between at 1 p.m.  That match will also not count towards to the RMAC standings.
 
Attendance Policies

A limited number of fans will be admitted to Sunday's contests, but only under the following protocols.

• Tickets are only available to Student Athlete's Families (of all teams) & CMU Community (Faculty/Staff/Students).  All tickets must be purchased/reserved through www.cmumavericks.com/tickets in advance (no ticket sales at the door).
• All fans must be COVID-19 tested no more than 96 hours prior to the contests and must show proof of a negative test prior to being admitted into the contest.
• Guests who have tested positive in the previous 90 days and exhibit no symptoms must present evidence of the positive test in lieu of above testing requirement
• All fans must have a ticket & each ticket will be tied to a name, phone number, and email should contact tracing be necessary
• Masks must be worn at all times & fans must maintain social distancing when possible.  

Other ways to follow
 
Although in-person attendance is limited, fans can follow the Mavs through a live stream on the RMAC Network and live statistics.  A full recap will also be posted on www.cmumavericks.com following the matches.
 
How this Spring season will work
 
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, due to COVID protocol or winter weather travel related issues.
 
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.  The same can be said for the CSU PUeblo match this week.  
 
This Sunday was originally scheduled by the RMAC to be a pod with New Mexico Highlands.  However, the Cowgirls announced last month that they will not play this spring, which resulted in the planning for Sunday to be a single match against Regis. 

As this week progressed, CSU Pueblo learned that their opportunity to play matches in a home pod against Black Hills State and Western Colorado was lost due to COVID protocols.  Thus, this new pod was hastily arranged on Thursday.
 
With the addition of the match against CSU-Pueblo, CMU is now slated to play a total of six matches at home, hosting pods on Friday, Feb. 12 and Thursday, Mar. 4 as well.
 
Tournament qualification
 
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.

RMAC Poll

The Mavericks were picked fourth in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Preseason Coaches' Poll, which was announced Tuesday.
 
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.
 
Players to Watch
 
In conjunction with the poll, the RMAC released a list of Players to Watch, 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.
 
Other key returners
 
In addition to Norwood and Layman, the Mavericks also return three other semi-regular starters from the 2019 team, which went 17-10 and 13-5 in the RMAC to finish in a fourth place tie with the Colorado School of Mines, which ended the Mavs' season in the quarterfinals of the RMAC regular season.
 
Now sophomore Maranda Theleus is one of just three returning Mavs (Layman, Norwood), who played in all 27 matches in 2019.  As a freshman at the time, she started in 18 of 19 matches on the right side during the heart of the season before coming off the bench in the six November matches.  She tallied 159 kills last season, the most of any returning Mav.  She is also the team's top returning blocker with 36.
 
Senior Maddi Foutz made 16 starts and played in 26 matches in her first season as a Maverick after playing as a defensive specialist at Division I power Colorado State in her first two collegiate years.  She played as both an outside hitter and defensive specialist in 2019 and recorded 75 kills and 165 digs, the second most of any returning Maverick behind Layman.
 
As Theleus' and Foutz's starting positions tailed off in 2019, another outside hitter in Holly Schmidt, now a junior, emerged as a regular starter.  Schmidt played in 24 matches overall and made 14 starts, starting each of the final ten matches.  She was very consistent down the stretch, recording between eight and ten kills in each of CMU's final five affairs.
 
Fourth-year redshirt junior Ashton Reese is also experienced and has made 45 appearances during her injury-hampered career.  She made four starts a year ago.
 
Sophomores Savannah Spitzer and Haley Hahn also made a combined five starts in the middle last season and are leading contenders for more extensive playing time following the departure of All-Americans Kasie Gilfert and Camille Smith.
 
Junior Emily Tucker is CMU's other returning upperclassmen and played in 15 matches last season.
 
New Faces
 
The Mavericks also have nine new faces to the program this year.  The Mavericks have six true freshman, a redshirt freshman in Courtney Moore and a redshirt sophomore Division I transfer in McKenna Palmer, who spent 1 ½ years and two fall seasons, including one that she redshirted, at Northern Colorado before joining the Mavericks in the spring of 2020. 

One of the freshmen in Paige Gwaltney also joined the Mavericks at the time after graduating from Rio Americano High School in Sacramento, California a semester early.  The other five freshman in setters Hahni Johnson and Sabrina VanDeList, middle blocker Caroline Pung, outside hitter Sierra Hunt and pin hitter Gabrielle Vogt joined the Mavs in the fall.
 
However, they will be slightly more experienced than a typical freshman considering they had the full semester to get used to the collegiate setting and to get to know their teammates when compared with the brief 2-3 week preseason in more normal situations.

Junior middle blocker Tye Wedhorn, a transfer from Fort Lewis, is also new to the program this year but plans to redshirt.
 
AVCA Poll
 
Regis, who the Mavericks will face this Sunday was also tabbed fifth in the AVCA Division II Top 25 Coaches' Preseason Poll, which was released on Jan. 5.  The Rangers and the Colorado School of Mines, tabbed 19^th, were the only two RMAC teams in the top 25 although MSU Denver also received 12 votes and were listed on two more of the 47 ballots cast.  Regis received 947 points in the preseason poll after finishing fourth in the final 2019 poll after their NCAA Tournament run.  Mines received 335 points.
 
Nebraska-Kearney was picked first in the poll with 1,131 points and 17 first place votes after advancing to the NCAA Tournament final in 2019.  Concordia St.-Paul (Minn.) was picked second with 1,095 points and received two first place votes.  2019 National Champion Cal State San Bernardino received a national-leading 28 first place votes to aid the their third-place point haul of 1,070.  However, the Coyotes' conference, the CCAA (California Collegiate Athletic Association) announced in December that no formal conference schedule would be played this spring due to the ongoing ramifications of the pandemic.

Washburn (971 points) was picked fourth in the poll.
 
Free Year
 
Due to ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic, the NCAA Division II Administrative waiver has granted a waiver to Division II fall sport student-athletes, who will now be permitted to receive both an additional year of eligibility and a season of competition, even if they compete in 2020-21.
 
The rationale of the waiver was partly due to the fact that the NCAA has already canceled all of the Division II Fall Sport Championships and that the amount of competition available will be significantly different than previous years.
 
To see the NCAA's release, click here.
 
Home Court Success
 
In 2019, the Mavericks had yet another strong record at home, going 8-1.  The Mavericks have won 17 of their last 19 matches at home after going 9-1 in Brownson Arena during the 2018 campaign.
 
The home-court success is nothing new as the Mavericks are 54-10 (.841) at home over the past six seasons since 2014.
 
The Mavs were also 9-1 at home in 2015 before posting 6-3 home-court records in 2016 and 2017.  CMU was also an impressive 15-1 in 2014 en-route to a RMAC Tournament Championship and NCAA South Central Regional final appearance and have had winning records at home in each of the last eight years since 2012, going 68-19 (.782) at home in that that span.
 
With the addition of Sunday's match against CSU Pueblo, the Mavericks are now slated to play six regular season home matches over three dates this season.
 
RMAC's winningest coach
 
Maverick Head Coach Dave Fleming enters his 16^th season with the Mavericks and is the winningest active RMAC Coach with 285 career victories. He is 285-158 in his previous 15 seasons, good for a .643 winning percentage.  His tenure is equal to the longest in the RMAC, amongst active coaches.
 
In his time at CMU, Fleming has guided the Mavericks to seven NCAA Division II National Tournament berths, two Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Tournament titles (2014, 2018), a 2014 RMAC Regular Season and Tournament titles and three RMAC West Division crowns (2005, 2009, 2010).  The Mavericks have had winning campaigns in all but one of his seasons and his teams have reached the 20-win mark five times, most recently in 2018, when they went 24-7.  Fleming was also named as the RMAC Co-Coach of the Year last year in a vote of his peers.  He also earned that honor outright in 2009 and 2014.
 
About Regis
 
As mentioned in the introduction, the Rangers are coming off an impressive 2019 season, when they went 29-5 overall and 17-1 in the RMAC to win the conference's regular season title. Although they were upset by eventual tournament champion Mines in the semifinals of the RMAC Tournament, the Rangers went on to host and win the NCAA South Central Regional.  They then downed Saint Leo in the quarterfinal round of the NCAA Division II Tournament before falling to top-seeded Cal State San Bernardino in the national semifinals.
 
The Rangers were hit hard by graduation after that season with the loss of three AVCA Honorable Mention All-Americans and four First Team All-RMAC selections, including 2019 RMAC Player and Setter of the Year Silvia Basso and 2017 RMAC Player of the Year Nikki Kennedy.  However, fourth year, reigning and 2-time RMAC Coach of the Year Joel List does return some talented players, most notably Caitlyn Burroway, a First Team All-RMAC outside hitter, who led the Rangers in digs (386) and service aces (26) while finishing second on the team in kills with 312 last year.
 
Sophomore Mara LeGrand also returns and is likely to be the team's starting setter after playing in all 34 matches last season in a more defensive and back-up setter role.  She was second in digs (252) and aces (25) behind Burroway last year and also finished second behind Basso in assists with 303.

About CSU-Pueblo
 
The ThunderWolves are coming off a 14-14 overall season in 2019.  They also went 11-7 in RMAC play to place sixth in the standings, allowing them to advance to the RMAC Tournament for the first time since 2016 under then first-year Head Coach Austin Albers.

With Albers now in his second year, the Pack has been picked fifth in this year's RMAC Preseason Coaches Poll and have named Jazzy Espinoza, Payton Stack and Maddy Wisniewski as their Players to Watch.
 
Espizona, a junior middle blocker, received Honorable Mention All-RMAC honors last season after finishing third in the RMAC for blocks with 112, the sixth highest single-season total in program history.   She also recorded 31 service aces, the fourth highest single-season total in Pack history.

Stack, a senior opposite, recorded 132 kills in her first season with CSU Pueblo after transferring along with Albers and Espinoza from Laramie County Community College.

Wisniewski, another senior opposite hitter, also earned Honorable Mention All-RMAC honors in 2019 after recording 201 kills, the most of any ThunderWolf returnee.
 
Series Histories
 
The Rangers have a 23-15 advantage in the rivalry with CMU since 1994 and have won six of the last seven matches between the teams since 2016.  However, the Mavericks' lone win in that stretch came at home in an epic 5-set battle on Sept. 28, 2018.  The Rangers were ranked 24^th nationally at the time, which is Regis' last visit to Grand Junction.

The Mavericks have fared much better against CSU Pueblo and hold a 34-15 lead in the series in the Division II era (1992-Present).  The Mavericks had won seven straight matches before CSU Pueblo took a 5-setter in the last meeting on Sept. 21, 2019 in Pueblo at Massari Arena.  The Mavericks have won the last six matches between the teams in Brownson Arena.  CSU-Pueblo's last road win in the series came in 2011.
 
Up Next
 
After Sunday's matches, the Mavericks will head away from home for their next two Saturdays and four matches, participating in pods at Westminster on Jan. 30 and at Chadron State on Feb. 6.  The matches on Jan. 30 against the host Griffins and Western Colorado, who they will play first at 2 p.m. will be classified as non-conference matches.
 
The Mavericks' next home matches will Friday, Feb. 12 against Colorado Christian (11 a.m.) and Westminster (5 p.m.).  Those two opponents will also face each other in-between at 2 p.m. that day.