GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— A thrilling pool, meet and school-record setting 400-yard freestyle relay win helped the Colorado Mesa University women's swimming & diving team pull out an incredible overall meet tie with NCAA Division I Northern Arizona University here at the A3 Performance Invitational, which wrapped up Saturday evening in the El Pomar Natatorium.
 
Trailing by eight points going into the final event, the Maverick "A" and "B" relay squads each bettered their Lumberjack counterparts to give the Mavericks an unprecedented share of the meet's team title as each team finished on 1,168 points, more than 500 ahead of third-place Colorado School of Mines.
 
Including this year's co-title, the Mavericks have now won eight crowns in the 11-year history of the meet, which featured six teams this year.  NAU, the 8-team defending Western Athletic Conference Champions, was competing in the meet for the first time.
 
Prior to this year's finish, the closest margin of victory had been 54 points as the Mavs finished second behind Cal Baptist in 2013.
 
The Mavericks, ranked a program-high seventh in the CSCAA Division II Top 25 Coaches' Poll this year, held a 60-point lead heading into the final day but trailed for the first time after the 200-yard butterfly, the final individual event of the 4-day, 22-event (21 scoring events) meet.  However, Maverick Head Coach Mickey Wender made some last-minute relay make-up and order changes as the Mavs pulled back the necessary point difference thanks to efforts of both relay quartets.
 
Lauren White, who had won the 200-yard backstroke earlier in the night, Ruby Bottai, Kelsea Wright and Davy Brown competed on the "A" squad and blazed to a convincing and wire-to-wire win in 3:23.93, which smashed both the former pool (3:25.36) and meet (3:26.90) records, which had been set by now Division I and former Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference rival Cal Baptist. 
 
With the altitude-adjustment, CMU's time also more than a second faster than the former Maverick standard of 3:24.56, set in 2018.  It is also the second fasted in Division II this year and is a qualifying time for this season's national championship meet.
 
White also posted a NCAA provisional qualifying 100-yard lead-off split of 51.16 seconds to move into the No. 2 position in program history for that individual discipline.
 
NAU's top quartet also went under the former meet record and touched in 3:26.72 while the Maverick "B" squad, which included Izzy Powers, Julie Day and late additions Lily Borgenheimer, named as the Female Swimmer of the Meet, and Katerina Matoskova, the Mavs' highest individual point scorer of the meet, finished in 3:27.76, 4.42 seconds ahead of NAU's secondary squad. 

Mines' top squad finished the race in fifth at 3:34.37 but was ahead of the Lumberjacks' "B" team in the opening stages, a placement that would have swung the ultimate team title in the Mavericks' favor.
 
The team-scoring push did not get off to a great start for the Mavericks as the Lumberjacks took three of the top four places in the 1,650-yard freestyle to shrink the Mavs' lead to just 45 points.  However, school-record holder Robyn Naze did finish fifth in the a NCAA provisional qualifying time of 17:40.29 in what was her first such effort of the season.
 
White then helped the Mavericks stretch the lead by a point to 46 as she won the 200 back in 2:01.05 (1:59.85-conveted) to move into the No. 3 position on the Division II performance list this season.  Matoskova, who scored 63 points in her four individual events throughout the meet, was just behind in 2:01.17 and now ranks fourth in the country.  Sarah Fillerup (2:04.81) and Davy Brown (2:05.34) also made the finals, finishing fifth and sixth, respectively.
 
The Mavericks then stretched their lead to 80 team points with second through sixth place finishes in the 100 free, behind NAU's winner Katherine Smith.  Logan Anderson led the group in an NCAA provisional qualifying 51.53 seconds to move into the No. 6 spot of program history.
 
Bottai (52.33), Wright (52.34), Powers (52.50) and Day (52.52) were also amongst the championship finalists.
 
Borgenheimer then claimed her third individual event win of the meet, all of which were done with meet-record setting times, in the 200 breast.  She touched in 2:13.91 as the Mavs' only representative in the "A" final, going against five Lumberjacks and a pair of Mines swimmers.
 
However, the Mavs also received some key points in the "B" section as Ellie Wilke (2:24.02) and Emily Moreland (2:25.34) went 1-2 in that race and ninth and tenth overall.  Wilke now ranks eighth in program history while Moreland set a new personal-best despite slipping out of the top 10, where she was to begin the night.
 
With the lead shrunk to 29 points thanks to NAU's depth, the Mavs then fell behind for the first time after the Lumberjacks had four of the top five finishers in the 200 fly to take the 8-point cushion.  However, CMU's Bella Walters, who had won the event in each of the last two years against Division II only competition, delivered a solid third place time of 2:08.51 after coming in seeded fifth after the preliminaries.  Naze also made the finals and placed sixth in 2:11.93 after ranking seventh after the morning session.
 
Elsewhere, Wright set a NCAA provisional qualifying time of 1:51.09 in the 200 free during a morning session time trial while Ali Lange set another national qualifying diving score of 426.45 to win a 1-meter exhibition diving competition.

Borgenheimer's 200 breast time was an NCAA Division II Championship automatic qualifying time and leads the country by more than 2.5 seconds.
 
NAU's Francesca Criscione was the high-point scorer throughout the meet, tallying 64 points in her four individual events.
 
The Maverick men won all 22 events throughout the meet to win their fifth straight and tenth overall A3 Performance Invitational title.
 
Including the exhibition diving win, the Maverick women won 13 events while NAU claimed nine.