GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— After getting out to a strong 3-1 start while moving into the national rankings, the Colorado Mesa University volleyball team will head on their longest trip in 28 years this weekend when they head to Tampa, Florida to play three matches in the 4-team, round-robin format Tampa Volleyball Classic.
 
The No. 24 Mavericks will square off with Wheeling (W. Va.) on Friday at 1:30 p.m. MDT (3:30 p.m. local time) before taking on the host and defending NCAA Division II Champion University of Tampa Spartans, ranked first in the national poll, on Saturday at 11:30 a.m. MDT (1:30 p.m. local).  The Mavs will then wrap-up the weekend against Tusculum of Greeneville, Tennessee four hours later at 3:30 p.m. MDT (5:30 p.m. Eastern).
 
All three opponents were in last year's NCAA Division II Tournament, as the Mavs were.
 
Live statistics for all three of the Mavs' matches can be found at TampaStats.com.  A free live stream of each can also be seen on the SSC (Sunshine State Conference) Digital Network at TampaSpartans.TV.
 
Last Time Out
 
The Mavericks went 3-1 at last weekend's Oredigger Volleyball Classic, the Mavs' season-opening tournament, in Golden, Colorado.  CMU swept 3-set matches over Northern State and then No. 19 UT Tyler on Friday before falling in a 5-setter to No. 22 on Saturday morning.  However, the Mavericks bounced back quickly in the afternoon session, sweeping Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference rival Colorado Christian in a non-conference affair.

Recaps: Northern State | UT-Tyler | Southwest Minnesota State/Colorado Christian
 
Friday's victory over UT Tyler allowed the Mavericks to avenge their 2021 NCAA Division II Tournament defeat to the Patriots.
 
The Mavs have now won seven straight matches over Colorado Christian, who they will face in RMAC play at home on Sept. 24.
 
The win over Northern State allowed the Mavs to take a 2-1 in the all-time series against the Wolves.  Northern State had won a 2019 match.  CMU's previous win over the Wolves came way back in 1996.
 
In the Polls
 
After beginning the season with the sixth most points in the "others receiving votes" category of the AVCA Division II Top 25 Coaches' Poll, the Mavericks moved into the top 25 in the No. 24 spot of this week's poll, released Monday afternoon.
 
The Mavericks garnered 140 points after their 3-1 start as one of three RMAC teams in the top 25.
 
Tampa, who CMU will challenge on Saturday, remained in the No. 1 spot and received 39 of the 47 first place votes cast in this week's poll while racking up 1,141 total points.
 
The Mavs are one of three RMAC teams in the top 25.  MSU Denver, which received one first place vote, remained fourth in the poll with 1,011 points after getting out to a 4-0 start.
 
The Colorado School of Mines is now ranked 14^th after starting the season 11^th.  Like the Mavs, the Orediggers went 3-1 last weekend falling only to Southwest Minnesota State, up nine spots from 22^nd to 13^th in this week's AVCA poll.
 
Another RMAC squad in CSU Pueblo, which went 4-0 with a win over now No. 16 (former No. 13) Angelo State, is now the top team in the others receiving votes category with 73 points.
 
A chance at the top dog
 
Saturday's match against Tampa will mark the first time since 2014 that the Mavericks have had a chance at facing the No. 1 team in the national rankings.  On Sept. 13 of that season, the Mavericks squared off with then No. 1 Concordia-St. Paul, falling in four sets during the Colorado Premier Challenge in Denver.  Although the Mavs lost that match, they did go on to post a 29-4 overall record while winning the RMAC Tournament crown and advancing to the NCAA regional final.
 
Sizzling Start
 
The Mavericks broke a 30-year-old school-record for team hitting percentage in their season-opening victory over Northern State on Friday.  The Mavericks hit .544 as a team against the Wolves, putting down 50 kills while committing just seven hitting errors, only one of which was unforced, on 79 attempts.
 
CMU's previous single-match hitting percentage record was .491, set against Western State back in 1992.
 
In Friday's win over the Wolves, the Mavericks had three players who had double-digit kills while hitting .550 or better.  Sierra Hunt led the Mavs with 13 kills on .550 hitting from her outside hitter position.  Right side Erin Curl had 11 kills and hit .625 in her Maverick debut while Tye Wedhorn put down ten kills while hitting .750.  Her fellow middle blocker Savannah Spitzer added seven kills without and error and hit .778.
 
C-U-R-L spells M-V-P
 
Graduate transfer Erin Curl got the Maverick portion of her career off to a great start, earning MVP (Most Valuable Player) honors at the Oredigger Volleyball Classic.  The award, determined by a vote of the tournament's head coaches, came after the Flower Mound, Texas native put down 36 kills and ten blocks during the Mavericks' four matches in Golden, Colorado last weekend. 
 
Curl, who transferred from Division I LMU after beginning her collegiate career at Alabama, was especially strong against the Mavs' two Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference foes, recording 11 kills and .625 hitting in Friday's 3-set sweep over Northern State before leading all players in Saturday's 5-setter against No. 22 Southwest Minnesota State.  Curl had 19 kills and three blocks while hitting .368 in that match.  She also recorded five blocks in Friday evening's win over No. 19 UT Tyler.
 
Leading "Hunt"-er
 
Maverick redshirt sophomore Sierra Hunt certainly lived up to her last name on the opening weekend of the season, registering a Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference leading 54 kills en-route to Oredigger Volleyball Classic All-Tournament honors.    She also leads the RMAC with her 3.86-kill-per-set average.
 
Hunt was in double figures in each of CMU's first three matches during the week, registering a match-high 13 kills in the win over Northern State before putting down 16 more later that evening against UT Tyler, more than twice as many as any other player in the match.
 
Hunt then recorded another 16 kills in the 5-set match against No. 22 Southwest Minnesota State on Saturday morning before finishing the tournament with nine kills against Colorado Christian.
 
The Aurora, Colorado native who earned Honorable Mention All-RMAC honors in the Spring of 2021 as a true freshman, also hit an impressive .407 throughout the weekend, a mark that ranks her fifth amongst all RMAC players, quite a claim for an outside hitter.
 
Speaking of Leaders
 
Maverick redshirt junior middle hitter Savannah Spitzer also leads the RMAC in the early season statistics after recording a .533 hitting percentage throughout the Oredigger Volleyball Classic.  Spitzer recorded 26 kills and made just two hitting errors in her 45 swings throughout the opening weekend of the season and leads the RMAC in hitting percentage by 83 points over the Colorado School of Mines' Shannon Perna, who had .450 during the Oredigger Volleyball Classic.
 
Zooming past a milestone and a former teammate
 
Maverick redshirt sophomore Sabrina VanDeList recorded a RMAC-high 170 assists over the weekend and in the process zoomed past the 1,500 career assist milestone while later passing her former teammate and now CMU assistant coach Ara Norwood on the Mavs' career assist charts.
 
VanDeList, the 2021 Spring RMAC Freshman of the Year and 2-time First Team All-RMAC setter, now has 1,654 career assists in her first 48 career matches, 18 more than Norwood, who finished her career with 1,636 assists.  The two split time at the setter position in the Mavs' 6-2 attack during the 2021 Spring RMAC title winning season before Norwood moved into a mostly defensive specialist roll last fall.
 
VanDeList now sits eighth on the Mavs' rally-scoring era (2001-Present) career charts for career assists.
 
Her early-season total of 170 assists is currently the tenth highest in all of Division II volleyball.  She ranks fifth nationally and second in the conference with her 12.14 per set average.
 
The RMAC's top leader
 
Now in his 18^th season as the Mavs' head Coach, Dave Fleming leads all active RMAC coaches with 324 career victories.  He is 324-167 in his time at CMU, good for a .660 winning percentage in nearly 500 matches (491). 
 
The Mavs recorded their sixth 20-win season under Fleming in the fall of 2021 after going 15-1 while winning the RMAC's 2021 Spring Season.
 
The success is nothing new for Fleming, who has now led the Mavericks to eight NCAA Division II National Tournament berths, two Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference regular season titles (2014, 2021-Spring), two RMAC Tournament crowns (2014, 2018) and three RMAC West Division crowns (2005, 2009, 2010).

The Mavericks have had winning campaigns in all but one of his seasons and are a combined 219-87 (.716) in conference play under Fleming.
 
Long Trip
 
The Mavericks venture to Tampa, Florida will be the program's longest in the last 28 years. 
 
According to Mapquest, the driving distance between Grand Junction and Tampa is 2,101 miles while the "as the crow flies" GPS-based distance is 1,682 ¼ miles according to a geodesic distance calculator, which integrates the curve of the earth, on the gps-coordinates.net website.
 
CMU's last longer trip came back in 1994 when the Mavericks ventured to Fairbanks, Alaska.  That trip would take drivers 3,179 miles and more than 50 hours through Canada according to Mapquest and is 2,370 miles "as the crow flies".
 
For those wondering, the Mavericks are flying to Tampa, departing campus on Wednesday and returning Sunday.
 
CMU last ventured to Florida on the opening weekend of the 2004 seasons, when they competed at West Florida's tournament in Pensacola.
 
About Wheeling
 
The Cardinals, who hail from Wheeling, West Virginia, will be spending their second consecutive weekend in Florida after opening the season with a 1-3 mark at the West Florida Invitational.  At that tournament, the Cardinals lost 4-set matches to the nation's fifth-ranked hosts and No. 8 Central Missouri on Thursday and Friday, respectively, before dropping a 5-set classic to Spring Hill.  The Cardinals had a match-point at 15-14 in that fifth set but dropped it 18-16.
 
The Cardinals then rallied to dominate Lees-McRae in three sets on Saturday.
 
Last year's Wheeling squad went 29-6 overall and 15-1 in Mountain East Conference play claiming the conference' North Division regular season and overall conference tournament title before hosting and advancing to the Atlantic Regional final, where they fell to Gannon in the NCAA Tournament's Round of 16.
 
In her 21^st season as Wheeling's head coach, Christy Benner has recorded 643 career victories and ranks as the fifth winningest coach in Division II history with her .820 winning percentage.  Her teams have gone an incredible 147-3 in the first nine years of the Mountain East Conference and have reached at least the regional final every time since 2011, winning the national title in 2015.
 
Junior outside hitter Tylah Yeomans registered 63 kills, an average of 3.94 per set, at last weekend's West Florida Invitational while junior Karly Niesen dished out 184 assists (11.50/set) from her setter position.  She lead all of Division II in assists per set last year (11.83).
 
Sophomore Berit Jones, a transfer from Central Oklahoma, tallied 54 digs (4.50/set) last weekend while Yeomans was second on the squad with 41.
 
Allonda Watkins recorded 28 blocks last weekend while Mady Winters, the 2021 MEC Freshman of the Year, had another 20.
 
The Cardinals lead Division II in team blocking, averaging 3.34 blocks per set in the early going of 2022.
 
About Tampa
 
The nation's top-ranked Spartans got out to a 4-0 start while dropping just one set at last week's Queens University Tournament in Charlotte, North Carolina.  The Spartans have now won 25 consecutive matches, winning each to their last 21 to claim the 2021 NCAA Division II title while finishing last season with a 34-2 mark.
 
2021 National Coach of the Year Chris Catanach has returned the services of Second Team AVCA All-American Claudia Rivera from last year's title-winning team.
 
The senior libero and defensive specialist from Gurabo, Puerto Rico, was the Most Outstanding Player at the NCAA Championships and got off to a good start in 2022, recording 35 digs in seven combined sets during three matches last weekend (Stats from Tampa's match against West Virginia Wesleyan are not yet posted).
 
Offensively, senior outside and right side hitter Kalli Cors put down 24 combined kills (3.43/set) in the Spartans' victories over North Greenville, Wingate and Lee.  Junior middle blocker Mackenzie Dufresne and freshman outside Nathaly Perez each put down 20.  Dufresne also hit a stellar .655 and registered seven blocks, second only to fellow junior middle Tatyana Lyons, who had 11.
 
About Tusculum
 
The Pioneers opened their season on Tuesday night, falling in a 5-set match to Carson-Newman in a South Athletic Conference Mountain Division match.
 
Fourth-year coach Danielle Marante returns 16 players from her 2021 squad that went 20-6 overall and 15-3 to win the SAC Championship while qualifying for the NCAA Division II Southeast Regional.
 
Their NCAA Tournament appearance was the first since 2013.
 
Marante, who played at Tampa, has four players who were named to the SAC Preseason All-Conference teams earlier this month.  Emiah Burrowes and Carly Sosnowski were first team picks while Carli Pigza and Elise Carmichael collected second team laurels.
 
Burrowes was named as the D2CCCA Southeast Region Player of the Year and earned AVCA Honorable Mention All-America honors as did Sosnowski, who enters 2022 with 1,055 career digs.
 
Burrowes, a senior outside hitter, is also the first Pioneer to ever win both SAC Freshman and Player of the Year honors.  She led the team with 311 kills and hit .260 last year.
 
Despite the loss on Tuesday, Burrowes finished with 23 kills while Sosnowski had 31 digs against Carson-Newman.
 
Series Histories
 
Venturing so far from home this weekend, the Mavericks will certainly get to face some new opponents.  The Mavs have never played Wheeling nor Tusculum and have only match up with Tampa once before, playing the Spartans on Sept. 5, 1998 in Jacksonville, Florida at the North Florida Tournament.  The Spartans won that match in three sets.
 
Up Next
 
The Mavericks will continue their challenging start to the 2022 season when they open up RMAC play against the defending conference champions and current national No. 4 MSU Denver Roadrunners next Thursday (Sept. 8) in Denver.
 
The Mavs will then return to Brownson for their home-opener a night later on Friday, Sept. 9 against Westminster.  That match will commence at 6 p.m., as will each of CMU's five Friday night home matches this season.