ROMEOVILLE, Ill.— The Colorado Mesa University women's cross country team turned in an impressive fourth place finish at Saturday's Lewis Crossover Invitational, a result that could provide critical to a possible repeat NCAA Division II Championship berth.
 
Led by senior Megan Hodges, who ran a personal-best time of 21 minutes, 55.8 seconds on the 6,000-meter course to finish 13th, and freshman Daisy Lalonde, who finished 20th in 21:59.9 during her full Maverick debut, the Mavericks scored 210 points to defeat six nationally-ranked teams, including four ranked ahead of them in the latest U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association NCAA Division II Poll.
 
The Mavericks, ranked 28^th, also racked up a multitude of out of region wins, a major factor in the selection process of the ten at-large teams for next month's national meet (Nov. 22) in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  Those teams will join the 24 automatic qualifiers, who finish in the top three of their respective regional championship meets on the weekend of Nov. 8.
 
Chico State, ranked 15^th in the poll, won the meet with 100 points, posting a 40-point gap over the host and ninth-ranked Lewis Flyers.  Unranked Biola took third with 180 while the Mavericks out-pointed No. 14 Pittsburg State by a margin of ten.
 
CMU also finished ahead of No. 20 Tampa (253), No. 10 Walsh (273), No. 11 Fort Lewis (371), No. 29 Palm Beach Atlantic (393) and No. 30 Colorado Christian (443) and was the first of four Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference and South Central Regional teams in the 36-team field.
 
Fort Lewis finished tenth as a team and had the individual winner in Hannah Hartwell, who held on to the win by just two hundredths of a second over Walsh's Claire Rethman.  Hartwell finished in 20:45.07. 
 
Colorado Christian finished 16^th while Black Hills State was 23^rd as the other two RMAC teams in the field.
 
The Mavericks had a 5-person pack time of just 51 seconds as Jordan Staniszewski (22:23.3), Autumn McQuitty (22:35.45) and Quin Gregg (22:46.8) rounded out the scoring contingent.
 
Hodges, who has now led the Mavs in all three meets this season, shaved nearly three seconds off her former career-best of 21:58.70 at last year's RMAC Championships.
 
Stansiszewski's time was also a career-best by more than 33 seconds and was good for a 42nd place finish.  McQuitty took 60th and Gregg finished 75^th.
 
Brooke Miller (84^th, 22:55.6) and Kate Linstedt (91st, 22:57.5) also finished in the top 100 of 335 starters.

Men's Recap
 
The Maverick men finished 20^th in a field of 36 teams with 485 points as freshman Clayton Wilson led the way with a 31st place time of 24:39.9 on the 8K course in his CMU debut.
 
Redshirt junior Chase Brown, the Mavs' leader in the first two meets of the season, took 57^th in 24:58.0, nearly 23 seconds faster than his 2023 Lewis Crossover Invitational and former career-best time.  He finished 93^rd that year and was 218^th last year.
 
Two other true freshman in Dominick Muller and Kael Jex were the Mavs' next two finishers.  Muller took 118^th in 25:37.1 in his first race in a Maverick uniform while Jex took 140th  in 25:46.9 in his debut.
 
Owen Frank rounded out the Mavs' team score with a 154^th place time of 25:50.8, shaving 28 ½ seconds off his former career-best time.
 
Up Next
 
The Mavericks will now prepare for the championship half of the season.  The RMAC Championships will be held on Oct. 25 in Colorado Springs at Monument Valley Park.