ALLENDALE, Mich.— Six Colorado Mesa University individuals plus the women's 4x100-meter relay team will compete at this week's NCAA Division II Outdoor Track & Field Championships that will get underway Thursday here on the campus of Grand Valley State University.
 
Action runs through Saturday and can be followed via a live stream on www.ncaa.com and live results, accessed here, which also includes a complete meet schedule as well as start lists.
 
A breakdown of CMU's schedule can be found below.
 
The Maverick men, who are ranked 15^th in the latest U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association's Division II National Ratings Index, have four athletes competing.  That is the largest contingent the CMU men have ever had at a national championship.
 
Representing the Mavericks will be Tony Torres in the 1,500 meters, Justin Thompson in the high jump and national championship debutants Gunner Rigsby and Spencer Purnell in the triple jump. 
 
CMU's women will be represented by Sierra Arceneaux in the 100 meters, Josie Coffey in the high jump plus the relay team, which includes Arceneaux, along with national meet rookies Haley Golden, Shaya Chenoweth and Jordyn Pittman.  Rachel Crutcher is an alternate and available for selection.
 
Torres, Thompson, Arceneaux and Coffey all earned USTFCAA All-America honors during the indoor season in their national championship debuts.
 
Torres took second in the mile at the indoor championships and is seeded third in this week's meet with his altitude-adjusted qualifying time of 3:41.84.  He will compete in the 13-man final on Saturday at 11:20 a.m. MDT.  Torres won the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference title in the 1,500 meters and then set a sea-level school-record of 3:44.31 earlier this month in Azusa, California.
 
Rigsby, who is seeded third with his school-record leap of 15.70 meters (51 feet, 6 ¼ inches) and Purnell, who is seeded sixth at 15.47 meters (50-9.25) are the first two Maverick men to ever qualify for a national championship in the triple jump, which will be contested earlier Saturday morning at 9:15 a.m. MDT.  They finished second and third respectively at the RMAC Championships behind UCCS' Dakota Abbott, the nation's top seed.
 
Thompson, who finished sixth at the NCAA Division II Indoor Championships before finishing second at this year's RMAC outdoor championships, comes into the national meet tied for seventh in the seeding with his personal-best high jump clearance of 2.12 meters (6-11.5).  He will be the only Maverick to compete on Friday, doing so at noon MDT.
 
The Maverick women will have busy stretches on Thursday and Saturday afternoon.  The preliminary heats of the 4x100-meter relay will commence on Thursday at 3:15 p.m. MDT, which will qualify nine teams for Saturday's final at 3:05 p.m.  The Mavericks, who come in seeded seventh out of 12 teams with a qualifying time 45.95 seconds, converted from their school-record setting time of 45.83 seconds, turned in at home and at altitude, will run in the second heat.  The top two teams from each heat and the next five fastest times will qualify.
 
CMU also qualified a 4x100-meter relay team for the 2019 NCAA Championships, finishing 11th, in what was their first ever relay-appearance at a national meet.  CMU then won the 4x400-meter relay title at this year's NCAA Division II Indoor Championships.
 
Meanwhile, Arceneaux, who anchored CMU's qualifying relay team, is seeded ninth in the 100 meters with an altitude-adjusted time of 11.60, posted in the preliminaries of the RMAC Championships.  She did not run the conference final due to injury.  She finished fourth in the 200 meters at the national indoor meet and was a member of the national title-winning 4x400-meter relay team.
 
Arceneaux will run in the first heat of Thursday's preliminaries at 4:15 p.m., less than an hour after the relay run.  Like the relay, the top two finishers in each of the two heats along with the next five fastest times will advance to Saturday's final, slated for a 4:25 p.m. start, 80 minutes after the relay final.
 
Meanwhile, Coffey comes into the national meet tied for eight in the high jump with her school-record clearance of 1.75 meters (5-8.75).  She finished ninth at the national indoor meet to earn second team all-America honors.  Her competition will begin at 3:15 p.m. MDT on Saturday.
 
CMU's Schedule (all times Mountain)
 
Thursday (May 27)
3:15 p.m.- Women's 4x100m Relay (Prelims)
4:15 p.m.- Women's 100m (Prelims)
 
Friday (May 28)
Noon – Men's High Jump (Final)
 
Saturday (May 29)
9:15 a.m.- Men's Triple Jump (Final)
11:20 a.m.- Men's 1,500m (Final)
3:05 p.m.- Women's 4x100m Relay (Final)
3:15 p.m.- Women's High Jump (Final)
4:25 p.m.- Women's 100m (Final)