COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.— Colorado Mesa University standouts Isaiah Cheeks and Ben Sampson once again swept the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference's Men's Swimming & Diving athlete of the week honors, announced Wednesday afternoon by conference officials.  The pair had done the same four times last season.
 
Wednesday's awards were based on a combination of performances from the Mavs' first two meets of the season because the RMAC did not bestow any Men's Swimmer or Diver of the Week awards last week because less than 50 percent of the conference teams had competed during the week the ended on Sept. 29.
 
Cheeks, a redshirt senior from Aurora, Colorado, has now earned seven consecutive RMAC Diver of the Week awards that have been bestowed.  He claimed all six weekly honors in 2022-23.
 
The 2022 NCAA Division II National 3-meter Champion and 2-time reigning RMAC Diver of the Year, got his final collegiate season off to a great start, setting NCAA Pre-Championship qualifying scores on both boards during the Intermountain Shootout on Sept. 29-30.  In the opening event of the season, Cheeks scored 296.85 points in six dives on the 1-meter board finishing second in a field of 14 total divers while surpassing the NCAA qualifying standard of 285 points.  Cheeks then tallied 506.00 points in 11 dives off the 3-meter board on Day 2 of the meet, again easily surpassing the qualifying standard of 460 points. He also took second out of a field of 14 in that event, while finishing higher than eight Division I divers and all of his teammates in each event as the Mavericks crushed Division I Air Force, 307-102, while batting BYU in the multiple-dual team format meet.
 
Cheeks is a 6-time NCAA Division II All-American and 4-time RMAC Champion.
 
Meanwhile, Sampson, the reigning NCAA Division II Men's Swimmer of the Year, was named as the RMAC Swimmer of the Week for the tenth time in his illustrious career.  The redshirt junior out of Arvada, Colorado got off to a fast start winning all five of his individual events at the season-opening Intermountain Shootout in Grand Junction before claiming four more relay event wins at last Saturday's Denver Relays.
 
At the Intermountain Shootout, Sampson set NCAA "B" cut qualifying and altitude-adjusted times of 48.25 (100 Back), 1:46.15 (200 Back), 1:49.99 (200 IM) and 3:52.48 (400 IM) and broke his own-school record with a time of 50.55 in the 100 IM, a non-championship events.  His 200 Back, 200 IM, 400 IM and 100 IM times still lead Division II in the early season rankings as does his 50 back split of 22.38, which came from the Mavs' national-leading 200 medley relay time of 1:29.10.  He still ranks second nationally in the 100 back.
 
In Denver, Sampson helped the Mavs win the 3x100 butterfly relay, the 3x100 backstroke relay, the 4x100 individual medley and the 200 free (4x50) relays while they took second in the 200 medley relay.  His 100 IM lead-off split of 50.42 (altitude-adjusted) re-broke his own-school record and extended his national lead.  The Mavs' 200 free relay time from Denver of 1:21.70 is second fastest in the country.
 
Sampson is a 15-time RMAC Champion and 14-time CSCAA All-American and won both the 200 back and 200 IM titles at last year's NCAA Division II National Championships en-route to the CSCAA national Swimmer of the Year honor.  He was also named as the RMAC Men's Swimmer of the Year for the second consecutive season in 2022-23.

The Mavs are off from competition this weekend but will return to the pool on Oct. 21, when they will travel to Golden to face the Colorado School of Mines in an RMAC dual.