GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— The Colorado Mesa University cross country teams will compete in their largest meet of the regular season and final pre-championship tune-up as they head to suburban Chicago for Saturday's Lewis Crossover Invitational.
 
The tenth annual meet will bring together NCAA Division II teams from around the country, who will run at the Lewis Cross Country Course in Romeoville, Illinois.
 
The women's "Red" race will begin at 9:45 a.m. CST (8:45 a.m. CST) while the men's 8K race will get underway 45 minutes later at 10:30 a.m. CST (9:30 a.m. CST).  Those races are limited to 12 runners per team.
 
Additional "White" races for the larger teams will follow although CMU will not participate in them.
 
Follow the Mavs
 
Live results from Saturday's race can be found at this link.
 
Lewis will also produce a free live stream on the GLVC Sports Network.
 
A full meet recap will be posted at www.cmumavericks.com on Saturday.
 
In the Rankings
 
The Maverick women are once again included in this week's U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association's NCAA Division II National Coaches' Poll, which was released on Wednesday afternoon.  The Mavericks are back in the No. 28 spot and have alternated between the No. 25 and No. 28 spots in each of the last four weeks after the Mavs were ranked 20^th in the preseason poll.
 
The Maverick women are one of nine ranked teams expected to compete in Saturday's race, joining the ninth-ranked host Lewis Flyers, No. 10 Walsh, No. 11 Fort Lewis, No. 14 Pittsburg State, No. 15 Chico State, No. 20 Tampa, No. 29 Palm Beach Atlantic and No. 30 Colorado Christian.
 
CMU's women also remained in the No. 8 spot of this week's (Week No. 4) South Central Regional Rankings.  The Mavs were ninth in the Week No. 1 and 2 rankings and were eighth in the preseason edition.
 
Who's Competing
 
The Mavericks are planning to run 11 women and eight men in Saturday's race.  Here is the listing of the Mavs' expected lineup.
 
Men: Jackson Baker, Chase Brown, Owen Frank, Kael Jex, Dominick Muller, Ryan O'Loughlin, Alex Spink, Clayton Wilson.
 
Women: Quin Gregg, Lauren Hodges, Megan Hodges, Wehazit Kelati, Maya Kobylanski, Daisy Lalonde, Kate Linstedt, Autumn McQuitty, Brooke Miller, Jordan Staniszewski, Shirley Weaver.
 
Last Time Out
 
The Mavericks last raced three weeks ago at MSU Denver's Roadrunners Invitational on Sept. 20 at Washington Park in Denver.
 
The Maverick women shined taking second place out of eight teams, while topping the list of seven Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference teams in the field.  They also finished higher than four teams ranked ahead of them in the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association's NCAA Division II Poll at the time.
 
Lauren Hodges finished third overall behind only two runners from Division I Colorado State while the Maverick women had two others in the top 20 and all of five of their scoring runners in the top 35.  Hodges finished the 6K course in 21:58.9.
 
Autumn McQuitty, who finished 15^th overall and 11^th amongst team scorers, and Jordan Staniszewski, who placed 20^th overall and 14^th amongst team scorers, joined Hodges near the top of the field.
 
The Maverick men finished seventh out of nine teams as Chase Brown led the Mavs for the second straight meet.  He finished 13^th overall and seventh amongst team scorers with a time of 25:40.6 on the 8K course.
 
A full meet recap can be seen here.

Why It Matters
 
Saturday's race could be critical to the at-large portion of the selection process for the NCAA Championships and will be CMU's lone chance of competing against teams from other regions around the country.
 
Thirty four teams will eventually be selected for the NCAA Championships, to be contested on Nov. 22 in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  Twenty four of those teams will earn automatic selection as one of the top three finishers in each of the eight regional championships on the weekend of Nov. 8.
 
The remaining ten spots are determined at-large— one at a time— through comparisons made between the fourth place finishers from each region.  Once that first team has been selected, the fifth place team from that team's region will be compared with the remaining fourth place teams from the other seven regions.  The process will repeat with the next team up being put in to the comparison process.
 
A full explanation of the process, can be seen here.
 
With limited opportunities to race teams from other regions, meets like Saturday will have a major impact on the process, which heavily relies on head-to-head results and result differences amongst common opponents.
 
In 2024, the Mavericks finished ninth in the perennially powerful South Central Regional but received one of those at-large spots after taking tenth place out of 36 teams at the Lewis Crossover meet, which proved to be enough fuel to get the Mavs in to the NCAA meet for the first time since 2014.
 
Maverick debuts

Five of the Mavs' 19 entries for Saturday's meet are expected to make their debuts in a Maverick uniform.  The debut list includes three of the Mavs' eight men and two of the 11 women's entries, both of which are expected to make an impact on the Maverick lineup.
 
Sixth-year senior Maya Kobylanski, who ran for CMU Director of Cross Country & Track and Field for four seasons at Division I Idaho, transferred to CMU this fall but has not yet run.  She won the 2022 Big Sky Conference steeplechase title in outdoor track and was a NCAA Regional Qualifier.  She also took the bronze at the Big Sky Cross Country Championships later that fall.
 
True freshman Daisy Lalonde is also slated to run in a Maverick uniform for the first time.  The Brownsville, Oregon native won eight total state titles, including two in cross country while at East Linn Christian Academy.  She ran unattached at CMU's home meet last month, placing sixth overall and would have been the Mavs' No. 2 runner on the day if she had been in a Maverick uniform.
 
On the men's side, freshmen Kael Jex, Dominick Muller and Clayton Wilson are all slated to run for the Mavs for the first time as part of Floeck's 8-man lineup. 
 
Muller, who took 21^st and Jex, who took 23^rd, also ran unattached at the Gig Leadbetter Maverick Stampede and would have been the team's No. 3 and 4 runners if running for the team.
 
Jex was a 6-time All-CIF performer at Big Bear High School and won three straight league cross country titles while finishing eighth, eighth and 12^th at the past three CIF Southern Section Championships.  Muller placed fourth at the AIA State Championships while at Hamilton High School in in Chandler, Arizona.  Wilson was a district and state champion for Siuslaw High School in Gardiner, Oregon.
 
Up Next
 
The Mavericks will begin the championship portion of the season, running at the Oct. 25 RMAC Championships, which will be hosted by UCCS at Monument Valley Park in Colorado Springs.
 
The women's 6K race is set for 9:30 a.m. while the men's 8K race will begin at 10:15.
 
Championship information can be found here.