GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— After an impressive start and then a weekend off, the Colorado Mesa University swimming and diving teams will return to action on Saturday when they host NCAA Division I Wyoming their lone dual meet of the fall season and their only home dual of the season.
 
A 16-event format will get underway at 1 p.m. in the Mavs' El Pomar Natatorium.
 
Live results can be accessed here and with a subscription to the MeetMobile app.
 
Separate live streams for the swimming and diving events, which will be held concurrently, can be seen on the RMAC Network.
 
Meet Format
 
Saturday's meet format will be the standard 16-event format with the exception that the 400-yard medley and 800 freestyle relays will be contested at the start and finish, respectively.  The full list of swimming events can be seen below.  Divers will contest the men's 1-meter and women's 3-meter competitions first in an 11-dive format.  The women's 1-meter and men's 3-meter will be contested over six dives.
 
Swimming Event Order (Women followed by men)
400 Medley Relay
1000 Freestyle
200 Freestyle
100 Backstroke
100 Breaststroke
200 Butterfly
50 Freestyle
1000 Freestyle
200 Backstroke
200 Breaststroke
500 Freestyle
100 Butterfly
200 Individual Medley
800 Freestyle Relay
 
Scoring
 
The standard dual-meet team-scoring will be used for Saturday's meet.  The top five individual finishers, with a limit of three per team, will score points with nine points going to the winner followed by 4, 3, 2 and 1 for the other top finishers.
 
Relays will be scored on an 11-4-2 basis with a limit of two scoring relays per team.
 
Individual swimmers are limited to four total and three individual events.
 
Re-Match Time
 
Saturday's meet will be a re-match in multiple regards.  The two teams faced off indirectly at the Denver Relays on Oct. 8 and also met in a dual (men's) and triangular (women's) last year (Nov. 5) in Laramie, Wyoming.
 
Just two weeks ago, the Maverick men defeated both Wyoming and host Denver in that meet, which did not include any individual competition.  The Mavericks won seven of the 14 relay events and scored 226 points to finish ahead of both Denver (198) and Wyoming (168).
 
CMU's women finished third with 164 points behind Wyoming (198) and won the 3x500-yard freestyle relay.
 
On Nov. 5, 2021, the Maverick men dropped a 183-117 decision to Wyoming while the women were caught in the crossfire of the Boarder War with Colorado State and fell 229-70 to the Cowgirls.
 
Last Time Out
 
As mentioned earlier, the Mavericks were last in action on Oct. 8 at the Denver Relays.  The Maverick men won seven events while the women claimed one against their Division I opposition.  For a complete meet recap, please click here.
 
Hypothetical WAC & Summit League Champs?
 
The Maverick men have won the last four Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference championships and based on early results from this year, would be hypothetically strong candidates to win some Division I conference titles.
 
The Mavericks finished ahead of the reigning Summit League Champions in Denver in their last meet and have finished higher than three different Western Athletic Conference teams in Air Force, Grand Canyon and Wyoming in their two earlier meets of the season.
 
In total the Mavericks have an unofficial 4-1 head-to-head record against Division I foes this year, falling only to BYU while taking second ahead of Air Force and Grand Canyon during the Intermountain Shootout at the start of the season.
 
RMAC Awards Times Two
 
Maverick standouts Isaiah Cheeks and Ben Sampson swept the latest RMAC's Men's Swimming and Diving Athlete of Week honors, announced Wednesday afternoon.  They had also won the initial RMAC Diver and Swimmer of the Week honors, announced Oct. 5.
 
Awards were not bestowed on Oct. 12 as less than 50 percent of the RMAC teams competed in the preceding week.
 
Cheeks led the Maverick divers to 3-meter diving relay victory at the Denver Relays while Sampson led-off winning relays in all five of his swims on Oct. 8.
 
Polling High
 
The initial set of CSCAA NCAA Division II Top 25 Dual Meet Rankings were released last Friday and saw the Maverick women achieve a No. 3 ranking, the highest in program history.  CMU's men were ranked fourth, equal to their highest-ever ranking, which had initially come last winter.
 
The polls, voted on by a panel of coaches and select media outlets, are designed to evaluate teams in a hypothetical dual meet setting and are not a pure prediction of NCAA Championship finishes.
 
The next release of the monthly poll is scheduled to be released on Nov. 18.
 
Speaking of Polls
 
Unsurprisingly, the Mavericks have been picked to win their fifth successive titles this year, according to the RMAC Preseason Coaches' Poll, announced on Sept. 21.  Both Maverick teams were unanimous picks atop the poll.
 
The CMU women received all seven possible first place votes to top the poll with 49 points.  CMU's men received all four possible first place votes to top the poll with 16.
 
The eight women's coaches each ranked their opposition 1-7 without voting for their own squad while the five men's coaches did the same, ranking their opposition 1-4. 
 
Maverick Coach Mickey Wender's first place votes went to the Mines women and Oklahoma Christian men, who were both second in the poll.
 
Oklahoma Christian's men are ranked ninth in the initial CSCAA Dual Meet Rankings poll while new RMAC affiliate member UT-Permian Basin is ranked 24^th.  Mines is also receiving votes.
 
Oklahoma Christian's women are ranked 23^rd.
 
Early Qualifiers & NCAA leaders
 
Coming off their best-ever season and NCAA Championship finishes, the Mavericks wasted little time in setting nine NCAA qualifying marks at their season-opening meet.

Lily Borgenheimer set NCAA provisional qualifying, otherwise known as "B" cut, times in all three of her victories, posting altitude-adjusted times of 4:28.03 (400 IM), 2:04.92 (200 IM) and 2:15.40 (200 Breast).  She leads Division II by 4.75 seconds in the 200 breast and is second nationally in both individual medleys, according to Swimcloud.
 
Teammate Amelia Kinnard ranks fourth in the 400 IM at 4:30.43 and is fifth in the 500 free at 5:03.48.
 
Maverick freshman Olivia Hansson is third in the country in the 500 free after turning in a time of 5:01.04.
 
The Maverick men set three NCAA qualifying marks as Sampson turned in a time of 3:54.45 (altitude-adjusted) to win the 400 IM.  He leads Division II by 3.38 seconds.  He also ranks second in the 200 back with a converted time of 1:47.41 and is third in the 100 back at 49.15.    He won both of those events at the Intermountain Shootout.
 
Meanwhile, Kuba Kiszczak ranks fifth in Division II with his 200 free time of 1:40.16.
 
Defending NCAA Champs
 
The Mavericks return both of their national champions from 2022 in women's 200-yard breaststroke champion Lily Borgenheimer and men's 3-meter diving winner Isaiah Cheeks. 
 
Borgenheimer, a fifth-year senior taking advantage of the NCAA's automatic COVID eligibility waiver, the first Maverick swimmer (male or female) to ever win a national title. 
 
Cheeks, a redshirt junior, joined 6-time national champion Ammar Hassan on the illustrious list of Maverick national diving champions and was named as the CSCAA NCAA Division II Men's Diver of the Year last spring.
 
Program Records
 
Led by those efforts and several other notable performances at the national championships, both Maverick teams set new program-records for their highest national finish while claiming the first top-10 finishes in program history.  Both squads also smashed the CMU marks for and national championship point scores in March in Greensboro, North Carolina.  The Maverick women finished fifth with 241 team points while the CMU men took sixth place with 221 points.
 
Four-Peat
 
The Maverick teams also swept the RMAC Championship team titles for the fourth straight year in 2022.  The CMU women set a new RMAC Championship scoring record of 1,323 ½ points and won the title by a commanding 548 points over the Colorado School of Mines.  They won 19 of the 21 individual events.
 
CMU's men also won their fourth straight and sixth overall RMAC title, scoring 1,225 points to win by 350 ½ over Mines.  The Mavs claimed 11 gold medals.
 
All-Americans a plenty
 
The Mavericks roster or returning all-Americans is quite lengthy and impressive.
 
Nineteen (10 women, 9 men) of the Mavericks who earned CSCAA All-America honors in 2022 return to this year's lineup.  That group earned a combined total of 55 (28 women, 27 men's) all-America honors, which go to the top 16 finishers in each event at the national championships, last season.  The top eight finishers earn first team honors while the ninth through 16^th place finishers are Second Team/Honorable Mention selections.
 
Ben Sampson earned seven honors as a redshirt freshman, the maximum possible.  He was the national runner-up in the 200-yard backstroke in March and was named as the RMAC Men's Swimmer of the Year.
 
Lauren White and Lily Borgenheimer each earned six honors last year.  White is the most decorated Maverick athlete (all sports) with 16 NCAA career all-America honors while Borgenheimer has won 12 at CMU and 15 in her career, which began at Minnesota State.
 
Mahmoud Elgayar (13) and Lane Austin (10) also return for the fifth years with double-figure career all-America honor totals to their credit.
 
Here's a list of CMU's returning all-Americans along with the number of honors each received in 2022 and the total number in their career.
 
Women
Logan Anderson (3 in 2022/4 career)
Kyra Apodaca (2/2)
Lily Borgenheimer (6/15 (12 at CMU)
Ruby Bottai (2/2)
Davy Brown (2/5)
Amelia Kinnard (2/2)
Katerina Matoskova (2/6)
Izzy Powers (1/1)
Lauren White (6/16)
Kelsea Wright (2/7)
 
Men
Lane Austin (4/10)
Isaiah Cheeks (2/4
Felipe D'Orsi (2/4)
Mahmoud Elgayar (3/13)
Mado Elkady (1/1)
Kuba Kiszczak (2/2)
Matheus Laperriere (2/3)
Ben Sampson (7/7)
Dejan Urbanek (4/4)
 
About Wyoming
 
The Cowgirls are in the midst of a busy stretch.  The Wyoming women defeated New Mexico, 203-147, in a 2-day dual meet last Friday and Saturday in Laramie.  They then fell 197-103 at Northern Colorado on Thursday will be in their second dual in three days and fourth day of action in an 8-day stretch when facing the Mavericks on Saturday.
 
Wyoming's men will be just as rested as the Mavericks as New Mexico, nor Northern Colorado, have men's programs.
 
In Thursday's dual in Greeley, the Cowgirls went 1-2 in the 200-yard backstroke with Kayla Cunningham topping the field at 2:06.53.  Emily Giles won the 200 IM in 2:13.21.
 
Sixth-year Head Coach Dave Denniston's men took third at last year's WAC Championships in Houston, Texas while their women finished fourth at the Mountain West Conference Championships.
 
Series Histories
 
Both Mavericks squads are 0-3 against Wyoming in previous all-time duals.  Saturday's event will mark the first ever time that the Mavs will have hosted the Cowgirls in a home dual and in state of Colorado in general.  The three previous meetings have been held within Wyoming, with two of those (2010, 2021) behind held in Laramie while another (2016) was contested in Green River.
 
Up Next
 
The Maverick swimmers will remain at home to close out the fall portion of the competition schedule, hosting the 4-day TYR CMU Invitational, beginning on Wednesday, Nov. 16.
 
The CMU divers have historically participated in that meet as well but will instead head to the Northern Arizona Diving Invitational in Flagstaff on the same weekend (Nov. 17-19).