PUEBLO, Colo.— Zayden Davis ran the fastest all-conditions 110-meter hurdle time in program history while the Colorado Mesa University Maverick men scored team points in all three field events that were contested on Saturday, the second of three days of action at the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Outdoor Track & Field Championships being held here at the CSU Pueblo ThunderBowl.
Davis posted a NCAA Division II Championship provisional qualifying time of 14.40 seconds to emerge out of the preliminary heats as the top qualifier for Sunday's final. The time, ran with a 2.1-meter-per-second tailwind, just over the record-setting legal limit, eclipsed D'Angelo Foster's 2017 wind-aided mark of 14.48.
Foster also holds the official CMU record of 14.65.
The Mavericks also qualified two men for the finals in the 200-meter dash on Saturday afternoon as
Elijah Williams qualified fifth in 21.36 seconds while
Kade Christensen took fifth in the preliminaries with a clocking of 21.94.
In the field, the Mavericks had two top-8 finishers in the discus throw as school-record holder
Hayden Riley finished fifth with a mark of 48.04 meters (157 feet, 7 inches). Redshirt freshman teammate
Jameson Moore also scored by taking ninth with a heave of 47.49 meters (155-10), a massive improvement over his former career-best of 45.47 meters (149-2). In the process, he moved up a spot to sixth in CMU history.
Meanwhile,
Zace Buckhold took fifth in the high jump after clearing 1.98 meters (6-6) on his second attempt at the height. CMU's
Eddie Kurjak finished ninth at 1.93 meters (6-4) while
Trey Briggs cleared 1.88 meters (6-2) to place tenth.
Becker Ell also grabbed a team point for the Mavs, placing eighth in the pole vault after clearing 4.40 meters (14-5.25). Fellow freshman
Garrett Searls claimed the same height to match his season and career-best, which was good enough for tenth place on the day.
Elsewhere, graduate student
Trevor Smith became just the second Maverick to ever break ten minutes in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, finishing 15
th in 9:58.89.
In other preliminary round results,
Jeremiah Reed finished 11
th in the 200 with a time of 22.15 seconds while
Dayne Ortega was right behind in 12
th place with a time of 22.26.
AJ Smallwood (22.51),
Jeremiah Wilson (22.51) and
Eliot Ward (22.62) also ran, placing 15
th, 16
th and 18
th, respectively.
Jake Valdez placed 14
th in the 800-meter heats with a time of 1:58.72 while Nathan Hanson placed 11
th in the 110-meter hurdles (17.95).
With eight of the 21 events in the books, the Maverick men are in seventh place in the team standings with 17 points.
