GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— The Colorado Mesa University Maverick track and field teams will send 62 athletes and have nearly 100 accepted entries (99) for this week's Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Outdoor Championships.
 
Action gets underway Friday in Chadron, Nebraska and on the campus of Chadron State College, playing host to the outdoor meet for the first time.
 
The Maverick men have 34 athletes and 51 total entries while the CMU women have 28 athletes, who will compete a combined 48 times.
 
Follow the Mavs
 
There will be wall-to-wall streaming coverage on the RMAC Network, provided by the meet hosts.  There are different streams for the running events and field events, so fans can follow the event or events of their choosing, especially with multiple devices.
 
Live results can also be accessed throughout the meet at rapidresults.com.
 
The RMAC will provide photography via their Flickr account.

Daily recaps will be posted on www.cmumavericks.com each evening.
 
Meet Details
 
The best one-stop resource for everything about the championships is the RMAC's Championship web page.  That is the page, where fans should go to purchase tickets. It also has a schedule of events and various other helpful links.
 
Heat/Flight sheets can be accessed here.
 
Action will get underway at 9:20 a.m. on Friday with the start of the women's heptathlon.  Saturday's action will begin at 9:15 with the fifth through seventh events of the heptathlon while Sunday's action begins at 9:30 a.m.
 
Events will run through roughly 7 p.m. on Friday and Saturday evenings while the post-meet awards are slated to be held at 4:10 p.m. on Sunday.
 
A total of 22 events will be contested by each gender.
 
The top eight finishers in each event will score team points on a 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis.
 
Preliminary heats will be held in the 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1,500 meters as well as the 100/110-meter hurdling events to narrow the field to eight, who will run for the points in those events on Saturday.  The 3K Steeplechase, 5K and 10K are finals-only events.
 
The top three finishers in each individual event will take home a medal and first team all-conference honors.  The fourth through sixth place finishers in those events will be named second team all-conference performers.
 
The members of the winning relay team will also earn first team honors while the runners-up will be second team selections.
 
How they Qualified
 
Athletes from 14 women's teams and 13 men's squads will be competing.  They qualified by being amongst the top 24 declared athletes in each individual events .  Schools could also enter a single relay team in the 4x400-meter and distance medley relays.
 
A complete listing of the qualified Mavericks by athlete can be found later in this preview.
 
Rankings
 
As a team, the Maverick women are ranked 23^rd nationally and are the fourth of five RMAC squads in the top 25 of this week's U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association's NCAA Division II Track & Field Results Index (TFRI).  The Mavs have 41.08 points in this week's index and have been inside the top 25 for each of the last three weeks, reaching as high as 19^th.
 
The USTFCCA also releases conference and regional indexes, a little bit more of an accurate predictor for a conference championship event.  The Maverick men are ranked second while the women are third.
 
Regionally, both of CMU's squads are ranked inside the top 10 of South Central Regional index, a hypothetical predictor of a regional championship meet if there were such a thing.  The CMU women are seventh while the men are ninth.
 
All of the indexes are based purely on season-best results.
 
Breaking down the contenders
 
On the men's side, the RMAC has six teams ranked inside the top 25 of the national rankings, led by No. 4 Colorado School of Mines, which surged nine spots in this week's national rankings.  Adams State is just behind and ranked fifth.  However, both of those schools sit behind national No. 21 UCCS and the Mavs in the USTFCCCA's conference index.
 
UCCS has won the last two conference titles after Mines won the 2018 and 2019 titles.  The Mountain Lion women have also won each of the last three conference titles (2019, 2021, 2022).  No meet was held in 2020 due to COVID.
 
The Mountain Lion women are ranked 25^th nationally, but lead the USTFFCCA's RMAC index ahead of Mines, which is ranked ninth nationally.  Adams State's women are also ranked fifth nationally.
 
Mines won the RMAC women's indoor title for the first time two months ago.
 
Championship Mavericks
 
The Mavericks have three athletes who will attempt to defend a combined four RMAC titles this weekend.
 
Sierra Arceneaux leads the list after winning both the 100 and 200 meters as well as RMAC Track Athlete of the Year honors last year.  She is also the top seed in both those events this year and also leads the RMAC in the 400 meters, an event that she will not compete in this weekend.
 
Arceneaux, a fifth-year senior, who will wrap up her RMAC Championship career this weekend, has five total RMAC titles to her credit, helping the Mavs win the 2019 RMAC 4x100-meer relay title as well as the 2021 RMAC indoor crowns in both the 200 meters and 4x400-meter relay.
 
Meanwhile, Mica Jenrette will be gunning for her third straight hepthatlon title and her sixth consecutive RMAC multi-event crown after winning her third straight indoor pentathlon in February.    She has already claimed six RMAC titles in her brilliant career, including the 2021 4x400-meter relay.
 
On the men's side, Zayden Davis will be looking to defend his 110-meter hurdling title after qualifying last week.
 
Two other Maverick women in Josie Coffey, a 2-time indoor high jump champion, and McKenna Molder, the 2021 indoor 400 meter title-winner, have also previously claimed RMAC gold medals.  Molder was also on the 4x400-meter relay team that won in 2021 before going on to win CMU's only relay national championship that winter.

Coffey is the top seed entering the high jump this week while Molder is entered in the 200 meters this weekend.
 
Elijah Williams and Justin Thompson also have three combined RMAC titles to thir credit.  Williams won both the 60 and 200 meters at the 2021 indoor meet, en-route to RMAC Championship Athlete of the Meet honors.  Thompson was the 2021 RMAC indoor champion in the high jump but has yet to win an conference outdoor crown.
 
Williams is seeded third in the 200 and fourth in the 100 meters this week while Thompson is ranked second in the high jump and third in the long jump coming into the championships.
 
Best Finishes
 
The Maverick women are coming off a third place finish at the 2021 RMAC Outdoor Championships, their best ever.  They had three event winners in Arceneaux (x2) and Jenrette and scored 81 points as a team, just shy of the program-record of 84 in 2019.  The Maverick women have had eight all-time event champions, five of which have come in the last three years alone.
 
The Maverick women also finished third at the 2023 RMAC Indoor Championships and have placed in the top-3 in each of the last three.
 
The CMU men's best finish came in 2017, when they had four champions and scored 124 team points.  They finished sixth last year.
 
NCAA Qualifiers
 
The NCAA made a change to qualification procedures for last year's national meets that has carried forward into the 2023 season.  There are no longer any automatic qualifying standard, only the provisional qualifying standards determined by a 5-year average of the 40^th place performer on the national (performance list).
 
Thus, coaches and athletes will be regularly checking on their position on the national qualification lists, especially as the season has now moved into the later weeks.
 
So far this season, the Mavericks combined for 18 NCAA provisional qualifying marks in 16 different events.  Eighteen different Mavericks women have combined to set those marks, including in two relay events.
 
A total of 754 athletes (377 men & 377 women) will be selected for the national meet with desired minimum field sizes of 20 for individual events, 16 for combined events and 14 for relays with maximum field sizes of 24 for individual events, 18 for relays and 16 for combined events.
 
Here's a look at the current Maverick NCAA Championship provisional qualifiers by event (rank as of Wednesday and mark (altitude-adjusted if applicable in parenthesis).
 
Men
100m
51. Elijah Williams (10.51)
200m
27. Elijah Williams (21.15)
4x100m Relay
20. Beau Thornton, Teo Casados, Kade Christensen, Elijah Williams (40.47)
High Jump
16. Justin Thompson (2.07m/6-9.5)
Long Jump
17. Thompson (7.43m/24-4.5)
Triple Jump
23. Zace Buckhold (14.85m/48-8.75)
Javelin
26. Gavin Korkeakoski (60.27m/197-9)
27. Cameron Kalaf (60.16m/197-4)
Decathlon
5. Dawson Heide (7207)
 
Women
100m
9. Sierra Arceneaux (11.52)
200m
6. Arceneaux (23.54)
400m
32. Arceneaux (55.63)
5K
37. Kira MacGill (16:56.32)
4x100m Relay
36. Gaby Horton, Arceneaux, Serenity Burnett-Perry, Avry Kennison (46.62)
High Jump
5. Josie Coffey (1.71m/5-7.25)
Triple Jump
29. Kiana Jackson (11.99m/39-4)
Heptathlon
9. Mica Jenrette (5022)
24. Jordan Brockman (4654)
 
RMAC Championship Entries
 
Below is a detailed look at all of the Mavericks qualified for this week's RMAC Championships, along with their season-best mark entering the weekend (altitude-adjusted where applicable).
 
In terms of numbers, the Mavericks are deepest in the sprinting, hurdling, jumping events.  The Maverick men have seven qualifiers in both the 100 and 200 meters, five in the 110-meter hurdles and four in both the high and long jumps.  Meanwhile, the CMU women have five entrants in the 200 meters as well as the high, long and triple jumps.  They also have four in the 100 meters and three in five other events.
 
Men (34 individual athletes, 51 accepted entries)
100m (7)- Elijah Williams (10.51), Teo Casados (10.60), Kade Christensen (10.69), Sterling Brassfield (10.73), Joey Zook (10.79), Jeremiah Wilson (10.82), Jeremiah Reed (10.89)
200m (7)- Williams (21.15), Brassfield (21.87), Christensen (21.87), Justin Blanton (21.92), Reed (21.97), Wilson (21.98), Zook (22.11)
400m (3)- Blanton (48.42), AJ Smallwood (49.65), Dayne Ortega (50.22)
800m- None
1500m (1)- Kevin DeGree (3:53.95)
5K (1)- Triston Charles (14:43.40)
10K- None
3K Steeplechase (1)- Mark Testa (9:26.19)
110m Hurdles (5)- Dawson Heide (14.64), Zayden Davis (14.86), Nate Hanson (15.55), Logan Hafey (15.85), AJ Iarusso (16.25)
400m Hurdles (2)- Kelsey Montague (55.11), Hafey (55.96)
4x100m Relay- 1 Team (40.47)
4x400m Relay- 1 Team (3:19.06)
High Jump (4)- Justin Thompson (2.07m), Eddie Kurjak (2.05m), Zace Buckhold (2.00m), Trey Briggs (1.85m)
Pole Vault (3)- Becker Ell (4.60m), Garrett Searls (4.13m), Kellen McConnell (3.98m)
Long Jump (4)- Thompson (7.43m), Buckhold (7.23m), Kash Bradley (6.86m), Rese McClinton-El (6.72m)
Triple Jump (2)- Buckhold (14.85m), Spencer Purnell (14.41m)
Discus Throw (2)- Hayden Riley (48.39m), Jameson Moore (43.61m)
Hammer Throw (3)- Moore (51.35m), Cameron Kalaf (49.32m), Riley (48.57m)
Javelin Throw (3)- Gavin Korkeakoski (60.27m), Kalaf (60.16m), Heide (52.61m)
Shot Put (1)- Riley (16.23)
Decathlon- None
 
Women (28 Athletes, 48 accepted Entries)
100m (4)- Sierra Arceneaux (11.52), Gaby Horton (12.09), Avry Kennison (12.18), Serenity Burnett-Perry (12.44).
200m (5)- Arceneaux (23.54), Jordan Burnett (24.94), McKenna Molder (25.10), Horton (25.27), Burnett-Perry (25.65)
400m (3)- Burnett (56.25), Emma Dikken (58.39), Elaina Arcand (58.76)
800m (1)- Alyssa Britton (2:19.36)
1500m (1)- Kira MacGill (4:33.02)
5K (1)- MacGill (16:56.32)
10K- None
3K Steeplechase- None
100m Hurdles (3)- Averie Griffith (14.87), Mica Jenrette (14.90), Jordan Brockman (14.94)
400m Hurdles (2)- Griffith (1:05.05), Williams (1:05.83)
4x100m Relay- 1 Team (40.47)
4x400m Relay- 1 Team (3:19.06)
High Jump (5)- Josie Coffey (1.71m), Brockman (1.61m), Gibson (1.60m), Matteson (1.60m), King (1.50m)
Long Jump (5)- Brockman (5.62m), Taeryn Trumper (5.57m), Kierra Arceneaux (5.53m), Lily Nieslanik (5.45m), Kiana Jackson (5.32m)
Triple Jump (5)- Jackson (11.99m), Natalie Smythe (10.90m), Nieslanik (10.74), Katie Thomson (10.70), Megan King (10.69)
Pole Vault (1)- Daisy Rinehart (3.38m)
Discus (3)- Heather Yackey (44.64m), Augustine Hancock (40.50m), Virginia Tomon (36.39m)
Hammer (1)- Hancock (42.17m)
Javelin- None
Shot Put (3)- Tomon (12.54m), Hancock (11.64m), Yackey (11.45m)
Heptathlon (3)- Jenrette (5022), Brockman (4654), Thomson (4277)
 
Upcoming Schedule
 
The Mavericks tentatively have last chance meets scheduled for home (May 7) and at Azusa Pacific (May 12-13) for athletes hoping to improve their stock on the national performance lists, which will shape the selections for the May 25-27 NCAA Division II Championships, which will be contested close to home at CSU Pueblo.