GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— The Colorado Mesa University women's track and field punctuated their best ever Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Outdoor Championship effort with four medal-winning performances on Sunday here at the CMU Track & Field Complex.
 
The Maverick women finished a program-best second with a program-record 123 team points, scoring 67 ½ of them over nine different events on the third and final day of the meet, the first conference championship the Mavs have ever hosted.
 
The Mavs recorded 14 of those in the triple jump as freshmen Kylee Kileian and Venesa Handzhiyska took second and third in that event while Katie Thomson led three Mavs in the top five of the heptathlon with a silver-medal winning score of 4,872 points.  CMU scored 16 ½ team points in the heptathlon.
 
CMU also claimed the bronze medal in the 4x100-meter relay to begin Sunday's point-scoring barrage as they easily surpassed last year's team that scored 102 team points at the RMAC Championships.  The 2023 squad took fourth while the 2022 team took third, in which had been the Mavs' best-ever RMAC Outdoor Championship finish prior to this weekend.
 
Thomson's score moved her all the way to second on the Mavs' all-time heptathlon performers chart behind only Mica Jenrette, who had won the past three conference crowns.  It was fueled by four career-bests over two days, including winning long jump and 800-meter efforts on Sunday.  She fared best in the 14-woman field with efforts of 5.54 meters (18 feet, 2 ¼ inches) in the long jump and a time of 2:21.01 in the 800 meters, allowing her to move into the No. 9 spot of CMU history for that discipline.
 
Meanwhile, Jordan Brockman took fourth with 4,291 points while Hope Matteson finished in a tie for fifth with 4,264.
 
In the triple jump, Kielian powered to a final round effort of 12.14 meters (39-10) to move up a spot to third in program history while moving from fifth place to second in Sunday's competition.  In the process, she passed Handzhiyska, who had a fifth round and career-best effort of 11.94 meters (39-0.25).  The Bulgarian had also earned the bronze medal in Saturday's long jump.
 
In the 4x100-meter relay, Serenity Burnett-Perry, Gaby Horton, Jordan Burnett and Sylvia Johansen got around the track in 45.93 seconds, the fifth fastest in program history to take third place.
 
Burnett-Perry and Burnett also helped the Mavs take seventh in the 4x400-meter relay with the Mavs' ninth fastest time of 3:54.94.

In between, Horton took second in the 200 meters and fourth in the 100 while Burnett was fourth in the 200 and sixth in the 100.  Horton ran to a career-best time of 23.84 seconds in the 200 while Burnett also set a personal-best of 24.10.
 
In the 100, Horton finished in 11.99 seconds while Burnett was clocked in 12.18 as they ran into a headwind.
 
The Mavs also picked up a solid fourth place finish from Brooke Miller in the 800, who had smashed the Maverick record in Saturday's preliminaries.  On Sunday, she was clocked in 2:11.87, just off her prelim effort of 2:11.32.
 
Brockman also scored a team point on the track, placing eighth in the 100-meter hurdles with a season-best time of 14.80 seconds.
 
Meanwhile, Christina Palmer took seventh in the shot put with a mark of 13.06 meters (42-10.75).  That, the triple jump and heptathlon were the only field events in Sunday's portion of the meet, which included ten finals in running events.
 
The CMU men also had their best ever RMAC Championships, taking second with 166 ½ team points.