GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— The Colorado Mesa University cross country teams will look to qualify for the NCAA Division II National Championships when they continue their season on Saturday at the NCAA Division II South Central Regional Championships in Lubbock, Texas.
 
Course maps and other pertinent information can be accessed through the meet information page, which will also later have a link to live results.
 
A free live stream of Saturday's races can be found on the LSC Digital Network.
 
Up to 30 women's and 28 men's teams from the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference and Lone Star Conferences are expected to compete in what is typically the deepest of eight regional meets to be held around this country this Saturday.

The women's 6K race will go off at 10 a.m. CDT (9 a.m. Mountain) while the men's 10K race will be held an hour later at 11 a.m. CDT (10 a.m. Mountain) at the LCU Cross Country Course.
 
Last Time Out
 
The Mavericks began the championship portion of the season on Oct. 21 at the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Championships in Denver.
 
The Maverick women ran to a strong seventh place team finish, their highest since 2014, while the CMU men finished 12^th.
 
Kirstin Williams led the Mavericks with a 13^th place individual finish earning First Team All-RMAC honors.  She completed the 6-kilometer course at Washington Park in 21 minutes, 34.5 seconds.  Redshirt sophomore Megan Hodges also turned in a strong 36^th place finish in 22:44.3 while freshman Autumn McQuitty was 56^th in 23:31.9 as the Mavs' third finisher.
 
Jacob Dalrymple led the Maverick men, placing 51^st overall and 48^th amongst team scorers with an 8-kilometer time of 25:52.6.  The Mavs' second through fifth place finishers ran together as a pack and finished within ten seconds and five places of each other.
 
A look at the lineup
 
Teams are permitted to enter up to seven runners in each of Saturday's regional championships.  The top five runners will determine each team's score while the sixth and seventh runners will displace runners from other teams, thus hurting opposing teams' scores. 
 
Maverick Head Coach Shane Niksic plans to race his full allotment of runners.  Five of the slated 14 have competed a combined seven at previous regional championships.  The two women's alternates also have previous regional experience.
 
The men's lineup (in alphabetical order) includes Chase Brown, Triston Charles, Drexel Cox, Jacob Dalrymple, Kevin DeGree, Ricky Diaz and Nate Sanches.  Nick Cockerel is the Mavs' alternate.  The women's lineup includes Jayna Boonstra, Lauren Hodges, Megan Hodges, Kate Linstedt, Autumn McQuitty, Kendall White and Kirstin Williams.  Jessie Beck and Arianna Kincaid are the team's alternates.
 
DeGree finished 63^rd as the Mavs' fourth finisher while Charles took 99^th as the fifth runner.

Sanches was not at the 2022 regional but took 67^th as the Mavs' fourth runner in 2021.
 
Charles also took 48^th at the 2021 regional, which was also hosted by LCU on the same course.
 
White finished 44^th as the Mavs' second runner in last year's women's regional while Megan Hodges took 99^th as the team's fifth runner.  Beck (109^th) and Kincaid (145^th) also ran last year but did not figure into the team score.  Kincaid also ran at the 2021 regional, finishing 161^st.
 
The no-doubt leader
 
CMU redshirt junior Kirstin Williams has been the Mavs' top women's finisher in all three meets she has run this season.  The Utah Tech transfer also became the first Maverick since 2016 (Alexia Chapman) to earn First Team All-RMAC honors when she finished 13^th at the conference championships.
 
The new guy
 
While Williams was no surprise, the Maverick men had a surprise leader at the RMAC Championships as transfer Jacob Dalrymple led CMU.  The Las Vegas, Nevada native finished 51^st at the RMAC Championships.
 
Dalrymple was the Mavs' sixth finisher in his previous two starts as a Maverick after transferring from NAIA Multnomah (Ore.).
 
Triston Charles, who led the Mavericks in two races this year, was out of the RMAC lineup due to injury.
 
Stepping Up the Distance
 
The men's regional and national championship races are contested over ten kilometers.  CMU's previous four meets were all contested on 8K courses.  The NCAA regional and national championships on the women's side are run on 6K courses, which the Mavs are used to after running that distance at both the Lewis Crossover Invitational and RMAC Championships.  CMU's first two women's meets were 5K events.
 
Regional History
 
The Mavericks' best regional championship finish to date came in 2014 when the Maverick men finished sixth to earn their first and only national meet appearance as a team in program history thus far.  Current Maverick Head Coach Shane Niksic captained that team.
 
The Maverick men also finished seventh in 2015 and 2016 and took eighth in each of the past two years.
 
The Maverick women also matched best-ever regional finish in 2014, when they also finished sixth to earn their first and thus far only team appearance at the national championships.  The 2008 team had also finished sixth at the Central Region meet.
 
The Maverick women took 11^th last year, their best finish since 2016, when they were eighth.
 
The Mavericks also qualified individuals for the 2022 NCAA Championships through last year's regional with Tony Torres and Kira MacGill getting through.  They were the first Mavericks to qualify since 2016, when Alexia Chapman qualified as an individual.
 
Alexis Skarda also qualified as an individual for three NCAA Championships in 2008, 2010 and 2011.
 
Region Honors
 
In addition to running for the NCAA qualification spots, runners in Saturday's races will be attempting to earn all-region honors from the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association.  The organization will recognize the top 25 individual finishers in each race at each of the eight regional championships with all-region honors, which will be officially announced next week.
 
Eight previous Mavericks have combined to win 12 combined all-region honors.  Kira MacGill, who is redshirting this season, was an all-region performer in both 2021 and 2022 while Tony Torres also earned the honors in 2022 on the men's side.
 
The Mavs have had two all-region honorees in each of the past two seasons with Jerod Kuhn and MacGill earning the honors in 2021.
 
Alexis Skarda is the program's only 3-year all-region performer (2008, 2010, 2011) while Daniel Vavrik is the only men's 2-time honoree (2014, 2015).
 
Meanwhile, Alexia Chapman, Lauren Lipski and Reanna Jereb all earned the plaudits in 2016 in the only previous year in program history has been that the Mavs women have had multiple selections.
 
Back in the Top 10 of Incredible Depth
 
Following their strong RMAC Championship performance, the Maverick women moved back into the top ten of the latest U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association's regional rankings, which were released last Tuesday (Oct. 24) after the conference championship weekend.
 
The Mavs are ranked tenth.  They had been ranked ninth in the preseason (Aug. 29) and Week No. 1 (Sept. 12) rankings before opening their season on Sept. 17.
 
The other nine regionally-ranked teams are also amongst the nation's top 30, according to the USTFCCCA's latest National Coaches' Poll, released last Wednesday (Oct. 25).  The region has four of the top five teams in the country with Adams State, Colorado School of Mines, Western Colorado and West Texas A&M checking in second through fifth, respectively.  No. 8 CSU Pueblo and No. 10 UCCS are also ranked in the nation's top 10 and fifth and sixth in the region, respectively.
 
Adams State is the defending region and national champions.
 
Colorado Christian, ranked eighth in the region, sits 17^th in the national poll, while Fort Lewis, ranked ninth in the region, sits 24^th in the national poll.  Dallas Baptist is ranked seventh in the region, but behind those two teams in the No. 25 spot of the national poll.
 
Just as deep
 
The regional field on the men's side is nearly as loaded with four RMAC and five regional teams ranked amongst the top nine of the national poll, a group headlined by top-ranked and defending regional and national champion Colorado School of Mines.  No. 4 Adams State, No. 6 Western Colorado and No. 7 Colorado Christian also represent the RMAC near the top of the country while West Texas A&M is ranked ninth in country as the only Lone Star Conference squad in the national rankings.
 
Fort Lewis and UCCS are also nationally-ranked in the No. 23 (tie) and No. 27 spots, respectively, while CSU Pueblo is receiving eight votes in the poll.
 
What it will take as a team
 
As mentioned above, the top three finishing teams will automatically qualify for the NCAA Division II National Championships.  However, the South Central Region has also typically received multiple at-large selections based on the strength of the region.  Ten total at-large bids will be handed out.
 
In 2022, eight women's and five men's teams represented the region at the NCAA Division II Championships, while sweeping the team titles.

Adams State's women won its third straight and 20th NCAA Division II national title in 2022, finishing ahead of Mines (3^rd), UCCS (4^th), CSU Pueblo (6^th), Western Colorado (8^th) and Colorado Christian (10^th) as the RMAC had six of the top ten teams in the country.  West Texas A&M, which finished 13^th, and Dallas Baptist, who took 14^th also qualified for the national meet as a team and finished well inside the top half of the 34-team field.
 
Mines won the men's title while Colorado Christian placed third to earn a spot on the podium as well.   Western Colorado (11^th), UCCS (13^th) and West Texas A&M (15^th) also represented the region at last year's championships.
 
In 2021, five RMAC and six men's teams from the region were selected as a team for that year's NCAA Division II National Championships.  All five RMAC teams finished in the top 10 with Mines (2^nd), Adams State (3^rd) and UCCS (5^th) all finishing in the top five nationally.
 
Adams State won last year's national title on the women's side as one of four RMAC teams in the top nine.  Eight teams from the region were selected to the national meet in total.
 
In 2019, a total of six South Central Region men's teams, including three "at-large" squads and four total women's squads qualified for the national championships.
 
The 2020 championships were not contested due to COVID.
 
The ten "at large" berths will then be awarded by the NCAA Division II Men's & Women's Cross Country Committee using the selection criteria, explained in Appendix C of the NCAA Pre-Championship Manual.
 
It is important to note that at-large teams will be selected based on regional place order and that a team cannot be selected ahead of a team that placed in front of them at their respective regional championship meet, making every position in Saturday's results of critical importance.
 
CMU's lone competition against non-RMAC teams this year came at the Oct. 7 Lewis Crossover.  The Maverick women finished 17^th out of 33 teams and have head-to-head wins over 16 different out of conference and out of region teams.
 
The Maverick men placed 20^th out of 31 teams at the Lewis meet, racking up 11 head-to-head victories over other Division II programs from outside the RMAC and the South Central Region.
 
Individual Qualifiers
 
In addition to the 34 qualifying teams, a minimum of 24 men and 24 women will qualify for the NCAA Division II National Championships as individuals.  The top two individuals from non-qualifying teams at each of the eight regionals will be selected as will any other individuals who finish amongst the top five runners of their regional race.
 
Additionally, eight other individuals will be selected at-large using similar criteria as the at-large team selections.
 
Up Next
 
If the Mavericks do not automatically qualify as a team or individual runners for the national championships, they will await Monday's official selection announcement, which will be posted on NCAA.com on Monday (Nov. 6), to see if they will continue their season at the NCAA Division II National Championships.