INDIANAPOLIS— Colorado Mesa University cross country standouts Kira MacGill and Tony Torres were both selected as individual qualifiers to the NCAA Division II National Championships, which will be contested next Friday (Dec. 2) in University Place, Washington, it was announced Monday afternoon by the NCAA Division II Men's and Women's Cross Country Committee.  They also both earned All-South Central Regional honors from the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association, which formally announced its all-region teams earlier in the day.
 
The two runners are the first Mavericks to qualify for the national meet since 2016 and Torres is the first Maverick man to qualify since CMU qualified as a team in 2014.
 
They both qualified as the second individual finishers not on a selected team at Saturday's NCAA Division II South Central Regional in Denver. 
 
MacGill, a redshirt sophomore from Littleton, Colorado, finished 14^th in the women's 6K race on Saturday and was the fifth finisher from outside the three automatically qualified teams.  However, she benefited from Western Colorado and West Texas A&M both receiving at-large team selections, which moved her up to second into the pecking order.
 
Fort Lewis' Katie Fankhouser received the other individual selection after placing 11^th.
 
The South Central Region had eight teams selected, grabbing five of the ten at-large spots while the Central Region took four others.
 
The story was similar for Torres, who had finished 16^th individually and fifth from outside the three automatic qualifying teams in the Colorado School of Mines, Colorado Christian and Western Colorado, who had nine of the top 10 and 11 of the top 15.
 
UCCS and West Texas A&M, which finished fourth and fifth in the team standings then received at-large team selections which moved Torres, a redshirt senior from Oro Valley, Arizona, and New Mexico Highlands' Andrew Amor, who took 12^th on Saturday, into the two individual qualifying positions.
 
The USTFCCCA All-Region honor is the second in a row for MacGill and go to the top 25 individual finishers at each of the eight NCAA Division II regionals.
 
She is now one of just two Maverick women to have received multiple all-region honors joining 3-time (2008, 2010 & 2011) pick Alexis Skarda, who also qualified as an individual for the national championships in all three of those years.  Alexia Chapman, one of CMU's three all-region honorees in 2016, was the last Maverick to qualify for the national championships.
 
Both Maverick squads qualified as a team in 2014.
 
MacGill and Torres, a first time all-region honoree in cross country, have both had the opportunity to race on the national championship course this season, doing so at the Oct. 22 Division 2 Pre-Nationals Meet.  MacGill finished tenth out of 236 runners while Torres was 14^th out of a field of 223.
 
Torres is a 3-time USTFCCCA All-Region and 2-time All-American in track and field and has competed at three previous national championship meets in the mile (indoor) and 1,500 meters (outdoor).