GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— Eleven Colorado Mesa University divers will tune-up for the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Championships and go in search of NCAA Championship scores when they compete as part of a massive field of well over 80 divers at this week's Air Force Diving Invitational.
 
Five Maverick women are slated to compete at 10 a.m. on both Thursday and Friday while six CMU men will take to the boards at 3:30 p.m. on both days.
 
The women will compete on the 3-meter board on Thursday and move down to the 1-meter board on Friday.  The men will be in reverse order, contesting the 1-meter first on Thursday afternoon and the 3-meter on Friday.
 
All four events will be contested under the 6-dive format with preliminaries that will narrow the field to eight divers.  The women's finals are slated for 12:45 p.m. while the men's will begin at 5:15 p.m. on both days.
 
Many of the other divers in field will compete in platform diving events on Saturday, although the Mavericks are slated to return home on Friday to begin final preparations for next week's RMAC Championships.
 
Live results for the entire meet can be accessed through DiveMeets.com.

Update: A live stream can also be seen on the Falcons' YouTube Channel.
 
Who is Competing
 
CMU is the only Division II school expected to compete alongside divers from 11 NCAA Division I schools, who had entered as of Tuesday morning.  The Division I list includes two SEC schools in Missouri and Texas A&M and Pac-12 foe Utah.  Also entered are divers from BYU, Cal Baptist, Colorado State, Denver, Northern Colorado, San Jose State and Wyoming.  A total of 47 women and 39 men have been entered in each of the 1 and 3-meter events.
 
Maverick Lineup
 
The Maverick lineup includes six men and five women, who are all slated to compete on both the 1 and 3-meter boards.
 
Specifically, that list includes Kyra Apodaca, Kenya Mayer, Amelia Licht, Victoria Nguyen and Aubrey Preisler on the women's side.  The men's contingent includes Isaiah Cheeks, Devon Gordon, Wyatt Hermanson, Patrick Rathbun, Josh Thomas and Dawson Wilson.
 
In Search of Scores
 
Returning All-American Kyra Apodaca and defending NCAA Division II 3-meter National Champion Isaiah Cheeks have already secured qualification for the NCAA Division II Pre-Championship Qualification meet on Mar. 7, which will determine the diving field of 22 women and 18 men for the official championships, which begin later that evening.
 
The rest of the Mavericks, who are all in their first year of competing for CMU, have yet to qualify for the NCAA qualifier in Indianapolis and will be continue their search of their first of two needed championship qualifying scores this week. 
 
Qualification procedures for the NCAA Division II Championships have changed this year and now require divers to set two championship scores at two different meets, one of which is from a 6-dive event and another from an 11-dive format competition.
 
The RMAC Championship preliminaries will be contested over 11 dives.  The eight finalists will repeat their 6-optional dives and carry forward the score from the five compulsory dives.
 
The Mavs are also hosting a last-chance qualification meet on Feb. 18.
 
The 6-dive NCAA Division II qualifying standards that the Maverick are gunning for are:
 
Men's 1m (285)
Men's 3m (295)
Women's 1m (255)
Women's 3m (265)
 
Diver of the Week Honors
 
Kyra Apodaca and Isaiah Cheeks have racked up RMAC Diver of the Week awards this season, combining to win 11 throughout the season.  The pair swept the most recent awards on Jan. 25.
 
Cheeks has received the men's honor all six times that it has been handed out this season.  Apodaca has been honored five times this season and six times in her 2-year Maverick career.  No other women's diver has won it more than once.
 
Last Time Out
 
The Maverick divers were also at the Air Force Academy and the Cadet Natatorium as part of the USAFA Winter Invite, which was scored as a pair of back-to-back swimming & diving invitational meets on Friday, Jan. 20 Saturday, Jan. 21. 
 
As a complete unit, the Maverick men's swimming and diving program, finished third behind BYU and Air Force in the 11-event meet on the first day which included competition on the 1 and 3-meter boards.  The CMU men then took second behind Air Force but ahead of BYU and fourth place Seattle University in the 9-event Saturday meet, which included platform diving.
 
Meanwhile, the CMU women took fourth in both meets, handily defeating Seattle in both invitationals.  Air Force and Colorado State split the wins while BYU was third on both days.
 
In diving, Isaiah Cheeks finished fourth out of 15 men on the 1-meter and fourth out of a field of 16 on the 3-meter.  He finished higher than five Division I men on the 1-meter and better than six on the 3-meter, setting yet another NCAA Championship qualifying score of 300.60 points on the 1-meter.  Freshman Wyatt Hermanson was the second Maverick in the 1-meter event, taking eighth place.  Dawson Wilson was the second Maverick in the 3-meter, placing ninth.
 
Apodaca led the Maverick women in both events, placing ninth on the 3-meter before taking a strong third out of 15 divers on the 1-meter with her NCAA qualification clinching score of 255.20 points.
 
Victoria Nguyen was the second of four Maverick women on the 3-meter while Kenya Meyer was second out of four CMU women on the 1-meter.
 
Platform Debuts
 
Two Maverick men and two women went on to make CMU history as they competed in the 10-meter platform event on the second day of the USAFA Winter Invite.  That event is not contested at the NCAA Division II level but is a staple to the Division I championship format. 
 
Kyra Apodaca established the CMU women's record with a score of 141.40 points.  Victoria Nguyen scored 124.15 points on her five dives.  In the men's 6-dive platform event, Aiden Coon scored 149.05 points to establish the CMU record while Patrick Rathbun scored 128.00 points.
 
Up Next
 
The RMAC Championships will begin next Tuesday (Feb. 7), although the first diving event (men's 3-meter) will not be held until Wednesday, Feb. 8.    The men will then contest the 1-meter next Friday (Feb. 10).  The women will contest the 1-meter on Thursday (Feb. 9) and the 3-meter on the final day of the championships (Saturday, Feb. 11).
 
The preliminary round of each of the four events will begin at 1 p.m. on their respective day.  The top eight divers will then contest the finals during the evening championship sessions, which begin with swimming events at 5 p.m. on each of those four evenings.
 
Tickets for the RMAC Championships are on sale through the championship website.