GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— Five members of the Colorado Mesa University women's track & field team will get an early start to the 2024-25 indoor season when they compete in the pentathlon at the Mines Alumni Classic in Golden on Friday afternoon.
 
That 5-event discipline will be the only competition that the Mavericks compete in at the Colorado School of Mines' Steinhauer Fieldhouse.
 
Meanwhile, much larger contingent of the Maverick track & field squads will head to Gunnison for Saturday's Mountaineer Open at Western Colorado University. A preview of that meet will be posted on Friday.
 
Meet Details
 
The pentathlon event will begin at noon on Friday and will feature as many as 11 athletes, including the five Mavericks.  The men's and women's long jump events will also begin at Noon.  The meet continues with pole vault and shot put competitions into the evening.  A bulk of the meet, including running events will be contested on Saturday.
 
Live results can be accessed on Mines' website at minesathletics.com/tracklive.  The meet will also be streamed on the RMAC Network.
 
Pentathlon explainer
 
For those unfamiliar with how multi-events such as the pentathlon, heptathlon and decathlon work, here is a brief explanation.
 
The pentathlon will include competition in five different disciplines, namely the 60-meter hurdles, the high jump, the shot put, the long jump and the 800-meter run in that order.  Although they are competing against the others in the field, the athletes are more focused on themselves gunning for strong marks that earn them points on various scoring tables.  The points that each athlete earns in each discipline are then added together to determine their final score and the overall standings.
 
Thus, the placement of each athlete in each discipline is of limited importance.
 
Furthermore, as this Friday's competition is part of a regular season meet without team scoring, athletes will be even more simply focused on achieving their best individual marks to qualify for the RMAC or NCAA National Championships at the end of the season.
 
By successfully completing the pentathlon, will likely earn the athletes a spot in the RMAC Championships, which permit up to 18 athletes in each event, a meet size that rarely fills for the combined events.
 
On the national level, the top 16 declared athletes from the descending-order performance lists will be selected for the NCAA Championships in the combined events (18 in individual events, 12 relay teams).  To be placed on the descending-order list in the pentathlon, athletes must reach the provisional qualifying standard of 3,294 points after track-size and altitude adjustments.
 
The 16^th-ranked pentathlete last year scored 3,708 points.
 
The national qualifying window technically opened last Friday, although the first meet that included Division II athletes was contested on Wednesday as three pentathletes from Hillsdale and Tiffin set provisional qualifying marks at the Hillsdale Mid-Week Multi, although the best (3,516) is unlikely to secure national qualification.
 
A bulk of the country will open up the season this weekend.
 
Who's Competing
 
The Maverick lineup of five includes three veterans in Sophie Lindauer, Hope Matteson and Katie Thomson, who have all been some of the best multi-event athletes in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference in recent years.  Two new Maverick freshman in Atahlia Mills and Kaitlyn Pearson will also make their collegiate debuts on Friday.
 
Six other RMAC pentathletes are also entered into the competition, including Lisa Sutherland and Avery Wright from the host Mines squad.  MSU Denver has three entrants in Sidnei Cumings, Jaelyn Korbe and Jocelyn Korbe.  New Mexico Highlands' Rorjrika Cambell rounds out the field.
 
Colorado Christian, Division I Colorado, Regis and UCCS plus 25 unattached athletes are also entered into the meet as a whole, but will not be represented in the pentathlon.
 
Rivalry Renewed
 
CMU's Katie Thomson and Mines' Avery Wright will have a chance to renew their friendly multi-event rivalry on Friday.  Thompson won last year's RMAC pentathlon title by 68 points over Wright, before Wright was able to claim the RMAC outdoor heptathlon title by 59 points over Thomson at the 2024 RMAC Outdoor Championships in April.
 
Wright's personal-best score js 3,698 points, a Mines record which allowed her to defeat Thomson by 83 points at the Mines Winter Classic & Multi in January, which allowed her to qualify for the NCAA Championships, where she finished 13^th.  Wright also took 13^th at the 2023 NCAA Outdoor Championship heptathlon after taking second at that year's RMAC Championships.
 
Thompson set her PR mark of 3,615 points to rank second in CMU history at the same meet in January but fell just short of NCAA Championship qualification, which has so far been elusive to the Maverick standout, who has earned All-RMAC honors in all four of her indoor and outdoor seasons in the combined events.
 
"Hope"ing for more success
 
Fellow Maverick Hope Matteson has also been a strong multi-event performer for the Mavericks and will enter her senior season ranked sixth in program history in the pentathlon with a scores of 3,263 points from last December's Colorado Running Company Pre-Holiday Invite & Multi in Colorado Springs.
 
The Reno, Nevada native has won five total All-RMAC honors in her career, including three second team plaudits in the multi-events.  She is also a 2-time First Team All-RMAC performer in the high jump and ranks second in CMU indoor history with her career-best clearance of 1.70 meters (5-7), which allowed her to claim the silver medal behind program legend Josie Coffey at the 2024 RMAC Indoor Championships.  That effort came after she placed seventh in the pentathlon.
 
Matteson then went on to place third in the high jump and fifth in the heptathlon at the 2024 RMAC Outdoor Championships.
 
The start of the great end
 
Fifth-year Maverick Sophie Lindauer will also begin her final season as a Maverick this weekend. 
 
The Longmont, Colorado native has been a standout in a Maverick uniform and begins her redshirt senior season ranked amongst the program's all-time top 10 performers in five different indoor events, including the pentathlon, ranking eighth with a personal-best score of 3,130 points at the 2023 RMAC Championships, where she finished seventh after taking third in the heptathlon at the 2022 RMAC Outdoor Championships to earn one of her three career All-RMAC honors.
 
The others two have come in the 4x100-meter relay.
 
Lindauer also earned Second Team All-America honors in the 4x400-meter relay and is one of just three Maverick women on the 2024-25 roster to have ever earned all-America accolades.
 
Newcomers
 
As mentioned earlier, Atahlia Mills and Kaitlyn Pearson will make their collegiate debuts in Friday's pentathlon.
 
Mills is a Grand Junction native and placed in the top eight in three different events at the Colorado State Championships for the Grand Junction High School Tigers in May.  She also won the Southwestern League title in the triple jump and 100-meter hurdles.
 
Pearson, who hails from Pueblo West, was the Colorado 2A Athlete of the Year while competing for the Swallows Charter Academy Spartans and won the 100, 200 and long jump at the state championships while taking second in the 100 hurdles.  She also went on to win the USATF Region 10 Junior Olympic title before taking eighth at the USATF National Championships in the heptathlon over the summer.
 
Up Next
 
Friday's meet will be the only meet for the Maverick contingent in this calendar year.  Thirty-six Maverick women plus 30 Maverick men have been entered into Saturday's Mountaineer Open hosted by Western Colorado in Gunnison.
 
The Mavericks will then take an extended holiday break before returning to the heart of the indoor campaign on Jan. 24-25 at the Adams State University Qualifier in Alamosa.