GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— The Colorado Mesa University swimming teams time won every race they entered, including trials, and set the new Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Championship records in both 800-yard freestyle relays opening their bid for a sixth straight team title sweep in record-setting fashion on Tuesday evening here in the El Pomar Natatorium.
 
The Mavs also took down three school-records throughout the night as Ada Qunell, the men's 800-yard freestyle relay team and freshman breaststroker Marcos Otero all set new Maverick standards, the last of which came in a 200 breaststroke time trial as the Mavs capped the stellar night in fine form.
 
Earlier, the Mavericks swept both the "A" and "B" sections of both the women's and men's 800 free relays as the "A" squads both set new championship records to claim the gold medals.
 
Thanks to those and the "B" sections wins, both Maverick squads opened up 10-point leads in the early team scoring chase.  The CMU women, ranked first in the country, scored 64 team points to sit ahead of Simon Fraser and the rest of the 9-team field.  The Maverick men, ranked fifth nationally, also hold a 10-point lead over Oklahoma Christian (58-48) and the rest of the 6-team men's field.
 
Qunell, a sophomore from Whitefish, Montana, set the Mavs' new 200 free record as she posted a lead-off time of 1:49.57 (1:48.37-altitude adjusted), 0.30 seconds quicker than teammate Katerina Matoskova's former Maverick record, in the relay. 
 
Qunell now holds the CMU record in the 50, 100 and 200 freestyle events, sharing the 100 mark with Sierra Forbord, and has won three conference crowns in her CMU tenure.  She will also rank as high as third in Division II for the 200 free this season.
 
Matoskova, Benedict Nagy and Lauren White then all helped the Mavs dominate the race by nearly nine seconds as White and the squad touched in 7:19.44, going 2.33 seconds faster than CMU's 2023-title winning and former record-holding team.  In the process, White claimed her 17^th career RMAC title. 
 
Matoskova now has ten career gold medals while Nagy, a transfer from Division I Nevada, won her first as a Maverick after winning three straight Mountain West Conference titles at the Division I level in the 400 individual medley while swimming for the Wolfpack.
 
The Maverick women's "B" squad of Olivia Hansson, Sophia Bains, Sydnee O'Neil and Izzy Powers also won their heat in 7:29.53, which placed them 10^th officially.  They would have been third behind their Maverick teammates and RMAC newcomer Simon Fraser (7:28.27), if they were allowed to swim in the "A" heat.  The "B" team won their heat by more than 15 seconds.
 
The Maverick men would not be outdone as Kuba Kiszczak, Aziz Ghaffari, Dejan Urbanek and Ben Sampson won a thrilling "A" final in a new championship record of 6:30.29, taking down Oklahoma Christian's year-old championship record of 6:31.58. The Mavs also set a new altitude-adjusted school record of 6:25.49.
 
OCU took second in Tuesday's race, touching in 6:30.73 with what is the second fastest time in RMAC Championship history.
 
Sampson, who held off rival Victor Rosado down the stretch, has now won 16 RMAC titles in his illustrious career while Urbanek now has seven.  Kiszczak, who set an improved NCAA "B" cut time of 1:38.71 (1:37.51-altitude adjusted) as the lead-off leg, now has two RMAC titles.  Ghaffari, a graduate transfer who won the Atlantic Coast Conference title in the event while at Florida State, was making his RMAC Championship debut and posted an incredible 1:36.85 relay split.
 
Minutes earlier, the Maverick "B" squad of John Walgast, Jameson McEnaney, Jackson Moe and Jacob Troescher won their heat in 6:40.18, winning by more than 10 seconds over OCU's second unit.  Walgast had a 1:39.01 (1:37.81-altitude adjusted) lead-off split to move to the No. 9 spot in CMU history for the 200 free and on to the NCAA Championship provisional qualifying list in that discipline.
 
After receiving their gold medals, the Mavericks then went to work in time trials, entering 11 swimmers in nine different races.
 
Otero punctuated the night, posting a 200 breaststroke time of 1:58.45 (1:57.25-converted) taking down former Maverick great Mahmoud Elgayar's school record of 1:58.07 by 0.82 seconds.  Otero will also rank as high as seventh nationally pending other conference championship results.
 
Women's teammate Maddi Moran also set a new personal-best of 2:19.06 (2:17.86-altitude adjusted) in a time trial, a single one-hundredth of a second quicker than her former NCAA "B" cut best.
 
The 5-day RMAC Championship meet will run through Saturday evening.
 
Wednesday's portion will begin at 10 a.m. with preliminary heats in the 200 individual medley, 50 free and 1,000 freestyle.  The women's 1-meter diving preliminaries will begin at 2 p.m. while the finals in all of those events plus the 200 medley relays will begin at 5:30 p.m.