GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— After three regular season meets of increasing importance, the Colorado Mesa University Maverick cross country teams are set to take their efforts to yet another level as they begin the championship half of the season this Saturday, competing in the 2025 Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Championships at Monument Valley Park North in Colorado Springs.
UCCS will play host to meet, which will include the women's championship 6K race at 9:30 a.m. and the men's 8K race at 10:15 a.m.
UCCS will be producing a live stream that can be seen with a subscription to the RMAC Network.
Links to the championship website and live results can also be found above.
What's at Stake
In addition to conference team titles, Saturday's races, whiich will feature 15 teams, will determine the 2025 All-RMAC teams and many other of the conference's major awards, which will be presented following the race. The top 14 individual finishers in each race will earn First Team All-RMAC plaudits with the winner being named as the RMAC Runner of the Year. The 15
th-28
th place finishers will each be named to the second team.
The RMAC Freshman of the Year awards will also be given to the top freshman in each race while the RMAC Summit Awards will be given to the student-athlete with the highest GPA in each race.
The RMAC Coach of the Year awards will be determined by a vote of the head coaches and will be announced at a later date.
Loaded Fields
As is typically the case, the RMAC Championship fields appear to be loaded with talent. Seven women's teams, including the 14
th-ranked Mavs,
are ranked in the latest (Oct. 15) U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association's NCAA Division II Coaches Poll. That list includes No. 1 Colorado School of Mines, No. 4 and defending national champion Adams State and four of the top eight ranked teams with No. 7 Western Colorado and No. 8 UCCS.
No. 19 CSU Pueblo, which took third at last year's national championships, and No. 26 Fort Lewis are also ranked while Colorado Christian had been ranked all season before falling out of the latest poll.
The men's field includes six nationally-ranked teams including top-ranked Mines, the defending national champions, and No. 3 ranked Adams State. No. 6 Colorado Christian and No. 10 Western Colorado are also in the top 10 while UCCS and Fort Lewis are ranked 13
th and 21
st, respectively.
Last Time Out
The Mavericks last competed on Oct. 11 at the Lewis Crossover Invitational in Romeoville, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago |
FULL RECAP
The Maverick women finished fourth out of 36 teams and defeated six nationally-ranked teams, including four that were ranked above them at the time.
Megan Hodges led the Mavs with a 13
th place effort out of 336 finishers and clocked a personal-best 6K time of 21:55.8. Freshman
Daisy Lalonde also finished 20
th with a time of 21:59.9 in her full Maverick debut.
The Mavs had a 5-person pack time of just 51 seconds and had seven runners finish in the top 100.
The Maverick men finished 20
th out of 36 teams as freshman
Clayton Wilson led the way with a 31
st place time of 24:39.9 on the 8K course in his CMU debut.
Chase Brown was 57
th in 24:58.0, nearly 23 seconds faster than his 2023 time and former career-best time.
Ranking Surge
Thanks in large part to their Lewis Crossover Invite success, the Mavericks moved up 14 spots from 28
th to 14
th in the USTFFCCA Coaches' Poll, the largest jump of any team in both polls. That ranking is the highest in just over a decade since the Mavericks were ranked 11
th in the 2015 Preseason and Week No. 1. Polls before racing that season, largely based on their 2014 NCAA Championship qualification.
This year's Mavericks have now been ranked in all six editions of this year's poll, including the preseason poll which had them 20
th. The Mavs then alternated between No. 25 and No. 28 in the first four regular season editions.
The Mavs have now been amongst the nation's top 30 for ten straight polls, cracking into the group for the Week No. 5 poll of the 2024 season after receiving votes in the previous three polls.
Regional Ranks
The Maverick women also moved up two spots to a
season-best sixth in the USTFCCCA's South Central Regional Rankings. The Mavs have been regionally ranked all-season and were eighth in the Week. No. 3 and 4 editions after also sitting eighth in the preseason. They were ranked ninth in both the first and second week.
The Maverick men also broke back into the regional rankings for the first time since the preseason edition. The Mavs now sit tenth, the same spot they did in the preseason.
Other Rankings
The USTFCCCA also announced their first-ever XCRI (Cross Country Ratings Index) on Wednesday, a data-driven objective rating system to complement the traditional coaches' polls.
More about the new ratings index can be learned from the USTFFCCCA announcement.
The Maverick women are ranked 30
th nationally as a team and are led by
Megan Hodges and
Daisy Lalonde, ranked 125
th and 128
th as individuals. CMU's ranking is the fifth highest in the RMAC.
Flotrack also released their latest periodic Division II college rankings on Wednesday, which show the Maverick women at No. 17 after not being inside the top 32 prior to the Lewis Crossover. Hodges also moved up four spots to 38
th in the top-50 individual rankings.
Course Description & Weather
The RMAC Championship course at Monument Valley Park is mostly a 5-6 meter wide path of crushed gravel with grass start and finish sections at just over 6,100 feet of elevation. The course consists of an upper 2k loop and a lower 2k loop. The women will run a lower 2k, upper 2k, and end with the lower 2k loop. The men's race will feature the same route, with an additional upper 2k loop added to conclude the race.
Hannah Hartwell of Fort Lewis College will be defending her course record that she set last year at the UCCS XC Open, finishing the 6k race in 21:08. UCCS alum Afewerki Zeru owns the men's 8k course record of 23:56 set in 2022.
Saturday's races are expected to be run under sunny skies. The temperature at the start of the women's race will be hovering around 50 degrees and will warm up to near 60 degrees during the men's race.
A look at the lineup
Teams were originally permitted to enter up to ten athletes for each of Saturday's races, but must declare no more than nine who will be permitted to run. The top five runners will determine each team's score while the sixth and seventh runners will displace runners from other teams, thus hurting opposing teams' scores.
The eighth and ninth runners for each team will not figure into the team scoring process, but teams do not have to declare in advance who those eighth and ninth runners will be, thus anyone from the group of nine can end up being part of the team score.
The list of entries submitted by Maverick Coach
Travis Floeck can be seen below. Eleven of those runners (7 women, 4 men) have previous RMAC Cross Country Championship experience. For those that have run before, their best championship finish and year of that is listed in parenthesis.
Men: Chase Brown (56
th, 2024),
Quintin Collins (106
th, 2022),
Dillon Elliott,
Owen Frank (104
th, 2024),
Kael Jex,
Dominick Muller,
Ryan O'Loughlin (75
th, 2024),
Alex Spink,
Colton White,
Clayton Wilson.
Women: Quin Gregg (35
th, 2024),
Lauren Hodges (61
st, 2023 & 2024),
Megan Hodges (40
th, 2024),
Wehazit Kelati,
Kate Linstedt (37
th, 2024),
Kira MacGill (16
th, 2020),
Autumn McQuitty (54
th, 2024),
Brooke Miller,
Jordan Staniszewski,
Shirley Weaver (39
th, 2024).
PR's Abound
Although cross country times are not always directly comparable from meet to meet and course to course with a wide variety of terrain, weather conditions, altitude, up and downhill sections and numerous other factors, seven different veteran Maverick runners set personal-best times at the Lewis Crossover Invite last week, certainly worth noting as the Mavs had their final regular season tune-up before this weekend's conference meet.
Those new PR times are listed below:
Women (6K)
Men (8K)
Early Success
The Maverick youngsters also shined at the Lewis Crossover as
Daisy Lalonde finished 20
th overall and as the Mavs' second women's runner in her Maverick debut. The first CMU men's finisher in
Clayton Wilson and three of the team's top four were also true freshman who made their Maverick debuts. Wilson finished 31
st well inside the top 10 percent of the field while
Dominick Muller and
Kael Jex finished 118
th and 140
th as the Mavs' No. 3 and 4 finishers.
Open Race
Although not a part of the official championship, Saturday will also include open races which will have a multitude of RMAC runners not within the team limits. Unattached athletes and general running community members also take part in what has become an annual tradition in conjunction with the RMAC Championships to help celebrate the sport.
The races will be on the same course as the championship later in the morning and will commence at 8:30 a.m., when women will take to the course. A staggered men's start will then get underway at 8:35 a.m.
Live results for that race, titled the Monument Valley Open can be found here.
Six CMU runners are entered to compete in Maverick uniform, a list that includes
Caitlyn Boyle,
Elizabeth Boice,
Lauren Hodges,
Maya Kobylanski and
Ruthie Richardson on the women's side.
Quintin Collins is expected to run for the Maverick men if he does not get selected for the championship race. Hodges is also in that same position.
RMAC History
Adams State's women, have won four straight, 12 of the last 13 and 35 overall RMAC titles since the first women's championship in 1981. The Grizzlies have also had 32 individual champions since 1983, including last year's champion Ava O'Connor.
The redshirt senior from Ireland is on the Grizzlies' roster this season but has not yet run.
Western is the only other women's team to have won the team crown, doing so eight times, most recently in 2020. The Mountaineers have also had seven individual champions. CMU (Alexis Skarda, 2010), Fort Lewis and Southern Utah have had one individual champion.
The Mines men have won six straight and eight of the last nine RMAC titles after Adams State and Western dominated the conference for over three decades.
Adams State has won 37 RMAC titles, including two shared crowns, while Western has claimed 13, one of which they shared with the Grizzlies.
New Mexico Highlands' Andrew Amor stopped a run of four straight Mines individual champions in 2023, becoming the first Cowboy to ever win a RMAC title.
Adams State's Romain Legendre won last year's individual title.
CMU History
The Maverick women claimed a seventh place finish at last year's RMAC Championships, matching their 2023 finish, which was the program's highest since 2014, when they took fourth. Their best ever finishes were third place team tallies in 2008 and 2009. The Mavs also tied for third back in 1991, when only five teams competed.
CMU's men, who first competed in 2011, had finished fifth in the 2020, 2021 and 2022 championships before taking 12
th in 2023. They then moved back up to eighth last year. Their best ever finishes were in 2014 and 2015, when they took fourth.
On an individual scale, the Maverick women have had 19 total All-RMAC performers since 1991 and have had one honoree in each of the last five years. That list includes 2-time pick
Kirstin Williams, who earned first team honors in 2023 and second team honors last year.
Kira MacGill, who is on the Maverick roster, but has not run yet this season, earned second team honors in 2020, 2021 and 2023 and was the RMAC Freshman of the Year in 2020. She is part of the Mavs' ten entries and if she does run on Saturday, would make her first cross country appearance in nearly three years after earning USTFCCCA All-America honors with a 29
th place finish at the 2022 National Championships becoming CMU's first women's cross country All-American since Alexis Skarda in 2008 and 2010.
MacGill also went on to earn track all-America honors in the 5,000 meters at both the indoor and outdoor national championships in 2023, the latter of which was her most recent race. MacGill redshirted the following year and missed all of the 2024-25 academic year due to injury.
The Maverick men have earned 16 combined All-RMAC honors since 2014. Seven of those honors have come in the last five years alone, most recently in 2022 when Tony Torres and Ethan Abbs claimed the accolades.
RMAC Network News
The RMAC Network has moved to a pay-pre-view model for the 2025-26 season. This season, all RMAC athletic events broadcast by its 15 full-member institutions and associate members will only be available for purchase via a single-game pass or a monthly or annual subscription. Revenue generated by the network will be redistributed to the league's membership to enhance their programs.
RMAC fans can purchase monthly and annual subscriptions that will provide them with access to all regular-season, championship, and archived broadcasts on the RMAC Network. A monthly subscription costs $25, and an annual subscription costs $130. Single-game passes are available for $10, which grants access to a single game for 24 hours.
Additionally, a discounted annual subscription price will be available to students, faculty, and staff of each member institution throughout the year. Purchasing options and pricing for individual RMAC Championships will be announced closer to each event.
Up Next
The Mavericks will continue the championship portion of their season in two weeks, competing at the NCAA Division II South Central Regional Championships in Pueblo, Colorado on Nov. 8. CSU Pueblo will host that meet at the Pueblo Country Club.
