GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— The Colorado Mesa University cross country teams will welcome Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference rivals Westminster College and Western Colorado University into the Grand Valley on Saturday morning as the Mavericks play host to the Gig Leadbetter Maverick Stampede at Lincoln Park Golf Course.
The CMU women's triathlon team will also compete as will numerous unattached athletes.
The men's 8,000-meter race will begin at 9 a.m. while the women's 5K race will get underway at 9:45 a.m. Awards will be presented at 10:30 a.m.
Coach Connection
The meet is named in honor of former Maverick Coach Gig Leadbetter, who will be in attendance at the meet. Now living in Idaho, Leadbetter coached the Maverick women's cross country team from 1997-2013, guiding the team to its best ever team finishes at the RMAC Championships (3rd) in 2008 and 2009. He then started the men's program in 2011. Current Maverick Head Coach
Shane Niksic ran for Leadbetter and served as the team captain on that debut team and throughout his career with the Mavs.
Leadbetter, who also taught in CMU's exercise science program, coached CMU's lone cross country all-American to date in Alexis Skarda, who is also the lone Maverick runner to ever win an RMAC individual cross country title.
Who's Competing
As mentioned above, the Mavericks will be one of three RMAC teams in the meet. With the addition of the CMU Triathlon team, there will be four women's teams.
Individually, the Mavericks cross country teams have entered ten men and six women, who will compete for the team. There are also four CMU men and four women who are entered unattached.
The Maverick triathlon team has 11 entrants.
The Lineup
The Maverick men will be represented by
Ethan Abbs,
Casey Amori,
Triston Charles,
Ian Cropp,
Jerod Kuhn,
Peter Martin,
Nathan Sanches,
Trevor Smith,
Mark Testa and
Tony Torres. Amori will be running for the first time this season.
Meanwhile,
Alyssa Britton,
Arianna Kincaid,
Ricky Maestas,
Kira MacGill,
Lindsay Parsons and
Ella Rosenkranz will represent the CMU women. Maestas, a freshman from Woodland Hills, Utah, has competed unattached at the last two meets but will be making her team debut.
The triathlon squad will be made up of
Madison Batkiewicz,
Megan Buchanan,
Hannah Croasdell,
Shannon Feran,
Torin Lackmann,
Emma Polenske,
Maggie Simmons,
Lindsey St. Laurent,
Paloma Suarez Davila,
Maddy Watkins and
Abigail White.
A look at the polls
The Maverick men remained in the No. 7 spot of this week's U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association's NCAA Division II South Central Regional rankings. Western's men dropped two spots to fifth. Westminster is unranked.
In the USTFCCCA National Coaches' Poll, the Mountaineer men dropped seven spots to 16
th this week. The Mavericks, who had been ranked 30
th last week, have slipped out of the poll but are still receiving one vote.
On the women's side, Western remained in the No. 7 spot of the regional rankings while Westminster moved into the rankings in the No. 9 spot, which partially forced the Mavericks, who had been ranked tenth last week, out of the rankings. Western's women, who had been in the also receiving votes category of the national poll last week, moved back into the poll in the No. 29 spot.
Last Time Out
The Mavericks competed in their second meet of the season last Saturday as they went to Western's Mountaineer/Cowboy Invitational in Gunnison.
The Maverick women finished second amongst four teams with 54 points as redshirt freshman
Kira MacGill finished second individually. Senior
Lindsay Parsons and true freshman
Alyssa Britton also had strong performances finishing fifth and sixth, respectively, ahead of Western's No. 3 runner.
The Mavericks finished ahead of national No. 3 Adams State, which did rest many of their top runners.
MacGill finished the 5K course at more than 7,700 feet of altitude in a career-best time of 18:15.4, to record her best ever individual finish. Parsons recorded her second top-10 finish in as many meets while Britton tallied her first.
Maestas would have been CMU's No. 4 runner, as she placed 15
th while competing unattached.
On the men's side,
Tony Torres finished third and led the Mavericks to a third place team finish behind only nationally-ranked Western and Adams State. Torres finished the 8K course in 26:06.49.
Charles in Charge
Maverick redshirt freshman
Triston Charles enjoyed the best cross country race of his young career on Saturday finishing as the Mavs' No. 2 runner on Saturday in Gunnison. He also claimed his first career top-10 finish, taking tenth in 26:29.9, more than a minute faster than his collegiate debt, which came at the same location.
The Farmington, New Mexico native, had been CMU's No. 4 finisher in all four of the Mavs' meets during the 2020 COVID-abbreviated season, finishing a season-best tenth at the Mountaineer/Cowboy Invite, which was CMU's first meet of last season.
Last Year's home meet
The Mavericks also hosted a home meet at Lincoln Park last year on Oct. 10.
CMU's men finished third out of seven teams as
Tony Torres and
Mark Testa finished sixth and eighth individually.
The Mavericks women, led by a 14
th place finish by MacGill, finished fifth out of six teams.
Tri-athlete runner
One name to watch for in particular from the Maverick triathlon team will be
Shannon Feran. The third-year CMU student out of Broomfield, Colorado is also a member of the CMU track and field team after competing for the Maverick swimming team as a freshman back in 2018-19. In the spring outdoor track and field season, Feran recorded season-best times of 2:32.61 (800) and 5:11.95 (1500).
She has had a strong start to the triathlon season this fall, as CMU's top finisher in a convincing dual-meet win over Black Hills State at the Southern Hills Triathlon on Sept. 4. She then used her running talents to break away from the pack in the final running segment of and win last Saturday's intrasquad time-trial at Highline Lake State Park.
Up Next
The Mavs will continue a busy 3-weekend stretch next week as they will travel to Fayetteville, Arkansas to compete in the prestigious Chile Pepper Festival. That college portion of that meet, hosted by perennial Division I power Arkansas, has been moved up one day to Friday, Oct. 1 and will be CMU's third meet in a 14-day stretch that began last week in Gunnison.
The Mavs then begin the championship portion of the season on Oct. 23 at the RMAC Championships in Golden, Colorado.
