GOLDEN, Colo.— Redshirt freshman
Triston Charles and redshirt senior
Jerod Kuhn both turned in all-conference honors to lead the Colorado Mesa University Maverick men to a strong fifth place team finish in the brutally deep Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Cross Country Championships field on Saturday here at Applewood Golf Course.
Charles, who led the Mavericks for the first time in his collegiate career, finished 20
th after completing the 8-kilometer course in 25 minutes, 54.1 seconds. Kuhn, a Second Team All-RMAC performer for the second time, was just two places and 2.7 seconds behind Charles taking 22
nd.
Freshman
Ethan Abbs finished 29
th in 26:14.9, missing out on all-conference honors, which to the top 28 individual finishers, by just 0.7 seconds.
Mark Testa was just behind in 30
th in 26:18.7 while
Nathan Sanches completed CMU's team score of 131 points with a 34
th place individual finish in 26:23.6. He scored 32 team points.
Tony Torres, CMU's top runner in each of the previous four meets this season, finished 42
nd in 26:39.0 as CMU's sixth finisher.
Trevor Smith (59
th, 27:06.0),
Ian Cropp (80
th, 27:53.8) and
Peter Martin (82
nd, 27:57.7) also represented the Mavericks.
National No. 1 and meet host Colorado School of the Mines had three of the top four individual finishers and won the team title with 28 points. No. 3 Adams State was second with 47, using a 6-7-8 finish to do so.
No. 13 UCCS finished third with 84 points while tenth-ranked Western Colorado was fourth with 118 points, just 13 fewer than the Mavericks. New Mexico Highlands took sixth with 206 while national No. 5 Colorado Christian, which rested many of its top runners in preparation for the NCAA Division II South Central Regional Championships in two weeks, finished seventh with 213 team points. Their top runner came in 36
th.
The Mavericks will also compete in the regional on Nov. 6 in Lubbock, Texas hoping to earn a berth into the Nov. 20 NCAA Division II National Championships.
Mines' Dillon Powell won the individual title in 24:07.2, nearly 20 seconds ahead of UCCS' Afewerki Zeru (24:27.1).
The Maverick women also had an all-conference performer in Kira MacGill and finished tenth in the team standings.
