INDIANAPOLIS— Five Colorado Mesa University athletes were selected to compete in the NCAA Division II Indoor Track & Field Championships, which will be contested next Friday and Saturday (Mar. 8-9) in Pittsburg, Kansas.
 
The announcement was made Tuesday afternoon by the NCAA Division II Track & Field Committee.

The Maverick contingent includes four men and Josie Coffey, the only Maverick woman selected.  The group will also include three veterans and two first-time national qualifiers in triple jumpers Miller Jones and Eddie Kurjak, who was also picked in the men's high jump and will be the only Maverick to compete in two events.
 
Men's heptathlete Dawson Heide, men's long jumper Justin Thompson and Coffey, a high jumper, are all previous all-Americans as some of the most illustrious Mavericks in program history, who will once again have a shot at national glory.
 
All five of the Mavericks selected are ranked inside the top seven nationally in their primary event.
 
A total of 540 participants, 270 men and 270 women, were selected for the championships, which will be hosted by Pittsburg State University and held inside the Gorillas' Robert. W. Plaster Center.  Student-athletes qualified for the championships by reaching a provisional standard established for each event and by being amongst the top athletes on the national performance lists in their respective events.

The complete list of qualifiers is available here, which will also house live results for next week's championships.
 
The meet will be live streamed on www.ncaa.com and tickets and other meet information are available through the championship microsite.  
 
Capsules on each of the Maverick's qualifiers can be found below.
 
Josie Coffey (R-Jr., Lakewood, Colo./Bear Creek HS)
 
Coffey will be making her fifth overall NCAA Championship appearance in the high jump, but her first indoor appearance since 2021.  She is tied for the No. 7 seed on the national qualification list with her indoor school-record setting performance of 1.74 meters (5 feet, 8 ½ inches) at the Mines Winter Classic & Multi, which enabled her to earn that week's Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Field Athlete of the Week honor.  Coffey went on to win her fourth career RMAC title and fifth First Team All-RMAC certificate at last weekend's RMAC Championships, where she cleared 1.73 meters (5-8).  She has competed in five meets this season, claiming two wins and five top-3 finishes.  She is a 3-time overall USTFCCCA All-American and placed fifth at 2022 NCAA outdoor and ninth at both the 2021 indoor and 2023 outdoor championships.
 
Dawson Heide (Sixth Year; Bayfield, Colo./Bayfield HS)
 
Heide will be making his third straight NCAA Indoor Championship appearance in the heptathlon after having placed fifth in 2022 and tenth in 2023.  He was also fifth in the decathlon at the 2023 outdoor championships and is a 3-time all-American and will be competing in his fourth NCAA Championship.  He will come into the national meet seeded second with a converted qualifying score of 5,559 points.  He set an actual mark of 5,535 points to rank second in program history behind only 2018 NCAA Division II National Champion Spencer Jahr at the Colorado Running Company Pre-Holiday Invite & Multi on Dec. 8-9.  He then went on to set a 60-meter hurdle record of 7.91 seconds at the Mines Winter Classic & Multi, his only other meet this winter.  He was scratched from the hurdling discipline during the national declaration process.  Heide did not compete at the RMAC Championships in order to rest and prepare for the national championships.
 
He ranks amongst the program's top-10 all-time performers in seven different events and also holds the outdoor decathlon and long jump school records.
 
Eddie Kurjak (Jr., Longmont, Colo./Longmont HS)
 
Kurjak will be making his first national championship appearance and will the No. 4 seed (tie) in the high jump and the No. 14 seed (tie) in the triple jump.  After splitting his time between basketball and track & field over the last two years, Kurjak has focused on this jumping this winter, a decision that has shown huge payoffs.
 
He set the CMU school-record of 2.20 meters (7-2.5) in the high jump and has won five straight meets after placing second in his season-opening meet for that event.  That streak includes last week's RMAC title, when he cleared 2.13 meters (6-11.75).  Kurjak also placed third in the triple jump on Saturday with a mark of 14.77 meters (48-5.5), just off his career-best and national qualifying effort of 15.14 meters (49-8.25) from earlier this season.  He also placed fifth in the long jump at the RMAC Championships and had a career-best of 7.33 meters (24-0.75) in that event earlier this season.
 
He ranks third in CMU indoor history for both the long and triple jumps and claimed three of his five career All-RMAC honors this season.
 
Kurjak scored 20 team points at the RMAC Championships, equal to the most for any field athlete in the meet, and was named as the RMAC Field Athlete of the Week twice this season.
 
Miller Jones (Fr., Grand Junction, Colo./Grand Junction HS)

Jones the facility record while winning the RMAC title in the triple jump with a mark of 15.55 meters (51-0.25) on Saturday in Spearfish, South Dakota.  That effort was just shy of his personal-record and national qualifying mark of 15.57 meters (51-1), which he used to win the event at the Indoor Gorilla Classic in Pittsburg, Kansas, the site of the national championships.   Jones leads the RMAC season-long performance list and ranks sixth in the country with that mark, which also helped him win RMAC Field Athlete of the Week honors.
 
Jones also placed eighth in the long jump at the RMAC Championships and his easily made the transition from high school track & field, after winning both the long and triple jumps for the hometown Grand Junction Tigers last year.  He also set the 4A Colorado State Championship record of 50 feet, 5 inches in the triple jump last spring.
 
Justin Thompson (Gr., Carbondale, Colo./MSU Denver/Roaring Fork HS)
 
Thompson will be making his sixth total NCAA Championship appearance and will look to pad on his five previous all-America honors, when he competes in the long jump.  The indoor school-record holder at 7.59 meters (24-11), Thompson will enter this year's national meet as the No. 7 seed after turning in a RMAC-leading season-best mark of 7.56 meters (24-9.75) at the season-opening Mines Alumni Classic, which he used to win RMAC Field Athlete of the Week honors.  Thompson also has two other long jump wins this season and took the RMAC title last Friday with a mark of 7.49 meters (24-7), which was good for his second career RMAC title and tenth All-RMAC honor.
 
He finished sixth in the long jump at last year's NCAA Indoor Championships and will be competing in his fourth national long jump competition of his career.  He has also qualified for the NCAA meet in the high jump twice.
 
Should he finish tenth or higher, Thompson would become the most decorated Maverick men's track & field athlete in program history in terms of all-America honors.  He is currently tied with Nolan Ellis for the program record with five total honors.
 
As the holder of a perfect 4.0 GPA in both his undergraduate and graduate coursework at CMU, Thompson will also be a leading contender for the NCAA Elite 90 Award, given to the student-athlete at each national championship site with the highest GPA.  Thompson has won that award at each of the past two NCAA indoor championships as the only Maverick student-athlete (all sports) to ever win the award multiple times.