GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— The Colorado Mesa University cross country teams will have their most important day of the season to date on Saturday as the Mavericks run in the NCAA Division II South Central Regional Championships at Walking Stick Golf Course in Pueblo.
 
CSU Pueblo will host the meet, which will now begin with the women's 6,000-meter race at 11 a.m.  The men's 10K event will follow at 12:15 p.m. (Updated Times).
 
Course maps and other pertinent information can be accessed through the meet information page.
 
Live results can be found here.
 
Twenty six women's teams and 24 squads from the Rocky Mountain Athletic and Lone Star Conferences are expected to compete in what is typically the deepest of eight regional meets to be held around this country on Saturday.
 
What it will take as a team
 
The top three finishing teams in each race will automatically qualify for the NCAA Division II National Championships.  However, the South Central Region has also typically received multiple at-large selections based on the strength of the region.  Ten total at-large bids will be handed out.
 
The Maverick women, ranked 15^th in the national poll, have a strong shot at qualifying for the NCAA Championships as a team for what would be the second straight time and just their third in program history.
 
In 2024, the Mavs were one of nine teams from the region to go to the national championships.  The South Central Region then had each of the top three, four of the top five and five of the top seven teams at the national meet.  The region also qualified seven men's teams for the national field and had three of the top four finishing teams, including the national champions.
 
In 2023, nine men's and nine women's squads from the region qualified for the NCAA Championships, with five men's teams finishing amongst the top eight while four women's teams finished within the top six at the national championships.
 
In 2022, eight women's and five men's teams represented the region at the NCAA Division II Championships, while sweeping the national team titles.
 
In 2021, five RMAC and six men's teams from the region were selected as a team for that year's NCAA Division II National Championships.
 
In 2019, a total of six South Central Region men's teams, including three "at-large" squads and four total women's squads qualified for the national championships.
 
The 2020 championships were not contested due to COVID.
 
The ten "at large" berths will then be awarded by the NCAA Division II Men's & Women's Cross Country Committee using the selection criteria found here.  Head-to-head wins and common opponent victory chains are rewarded in that selection process.
 
It is important to note that at-large teams will be selected based on regional place order and that a team cannot be selected ahead of a team that placed in front of them at their respective regional championship meet, making every position in Saturday's results of critical importance.
 
CMU's lone competition against out of region teams from this season came at the Oct. 11 Lewis Crossover.  The Maverick women finished a strong fourth out of 36 teams and have head-to-head wins over 28 different out of region teams compared to just three losses from that meet.  Thus, the Mavs will hope that those three teams (Biola, Chico State, Lewis) will finish amongst the top three at their respective regionals, which would open up the door more even more widely for a potential "at large" selection if they are not able to finish in the top three at Saturday's meet.
 
The Maverick men placed 20^th out of 36 teams at the Lewis meet and will more likely need a top three team finish on Saturday to qualify for the national championships.
 
Individual Qualifiers
 
In addition to the 34 qualifying teams, a minimum of 24 men and 24 women will qualify for the NCAA Division II National Championships as individuals.  The top two individuals from non-qualifying teams at each of the eight regionals will be selected as will any other individuals who finish amongst the top five runners of their regional race.
 
Additionally, eight other individuals will be selected at-large using similar criteria as the at-large team selections.
 
Last Time Out
 
The Mavericks began the championship portion of the season on Oct. 25 at the RMAC Championships in Colorado Springs.
 
The Maverick women took sixth as a team with 179 points, their best finish in 11 years and had a pair of All-RMAC selections for the first time since 2014 as well.
 
Redshirt senior Megan Hodges, who has led the Mavericks in all four races this season, finished 13^th with a 6K personal best time of 21:31.7 to earn First Team All-RMAC honors that went to the top 14 individual finishers.  Jordan Staniszewski also garnered a second team plaudit with a 28^th place time of 21:58.0, more than 25 seconds faster than her previous best.
 
Wehazit Kelati also stepped up to be the Mavs' No. 3 runner with a personal-best time of 24:44.8, good for 49^th place overall and 43 team points.
 
Quin Gregg and Autumn McQuitty rounded out the Mavs' team score with 54^th and 57^th place finishes, respectively.
 
CMU's men finished 11^th with a team score of 301 points.  Three of the Mavs' top four finishers were freshman in Dominick Muller, Colton White, and Kael Jex, who placed 62^nd, 71^st and 75^th, respectively.  Chase Brown, the Mavs' top finisher in the first two meets this season, was the No. 2 man and placed 62^nd.
 
At the Summit
 
Chase Brown also picked up an honor at the RMAC Championships as he was named as the RMAC Summit Award winner.  The award goes to the student-athlete with the highest GPA amongst other criteria.  The Bloomingdale, Michigan native and civil engineering major has a perfect 4.0 GPA.
 
He has now won three straight RMAC Summit Awards in the 2025 calendar year after also picking up the indoor and outdoor track & field accolades.
 
A look at the lineup
 
Teams are permitted to send seven runners to the start in each of Saturday's regional championships.  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. 
 
Maverick Head Coach Travis Floeck plans to race his full allotment of runners and will bring eight men and eight women, including alternates, on the trip.
 
His planned lineup for the men's side includes (in alphabetical order) Chase Brown, Owen Frank, Kael Jex, Dominick Muller, Alex Spink, Colton White and Clayton Wilson.  Dillon Elliott is the alternate.
 
Floeck's list of eight possibilities for the women's side includes Quin Gregg, Lauren Hodges, Megan Hodges, Wehazit Kelati, Daisy Lalonde, Kate Linstedt, Autumn McQuitty and Jordan Staniszewski.  He has not yet decided on who his planned seven in.
 
The men's lineup includes four true freshman, one redshirt sophomore (Frank), one redshirt junior (Brown) and one redshirt senior (Spink).  Brown was the Mavs' top runner at last year's regional in Denver, finishing 53^rd as the only Maverick man with regional championship experience.
 
Four of the eight women's possibilities were a part of last year's regional championship lineup that finished ninth before earning an at-large berth in the national championships.  Megan Hodges finished 40^th as the Mavs' No. 2 finisher while Linstedt (49^th), McQuitty (53^rd) and Gregg (67^th) were also amongst the Mavs' scoring five.
 
Both Hodges twins, McQuitty and Linstedt were also a part of the Mavs' 2023 regional lineup as was Brown on the men's side.
 
National Rankings
 
The Maverick women will enter a regional championship ranked 15^th in the latest (Oct. 29) U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association Poll.  They were ranked 14^th the previous poll on Oct. 22, their highest ranking in more than a decade, but slipped one spot after the RMAC Championships.
 
The Mavs have now been nationally-ranked in all seven editions of the poll this season, including the preseason, and have been amongst the nation's top 30 for 11 straight polls dating back to the Week No. 5 poll of 2024.
 
The current poll includes eight South Central Regional teams, the most of any single region.  The top-ranked Colorado School of Mines, which won its first RMAC title just two weeks ago, highlights the list while UCCS moved up five spots to third after a runner-up finish at the conference meet.  West Texas A&M, the Lone Star Conference Champions, are now ranked fourth while Adams State, the defending regional and national championships, are ranked sixth, a two spot drop from their previous No. 4 ranking.  The Grizzlies took third at the RMAC Championships.
 
Western Colorado is ranked eighth while the Mavs are the sixth regional team in the poll at No. 15 ahead of No. 23 Fort Lewis and No. 26 CSU Pueblo.
 
Loaded Men's Field
 
The men's regional field looks to be nearly as deep and includes seven nationally-ranked teams, including four of the nation's top eight.  Adams State, which won the RMAC title, leads the bunch at No. 2 while the Colorado School of Mines, which won last year's regional and national title, is ranked third after taking second behind the Grizzlies at the RMAC Championships.  Colorado Christian and Western Colorado are also highly ranked in the No. 6 and 8 spots of the poll while No. 12 West Texas &M No. 15 UCCS and No. 24 Fort Lewis all look to make some noise for automatic or at-large bids to the national meet.
 
Regional History
 
The Mavericks' best regional championship finish to date came in 2014 when the Maverick men finished sixth to earn their first and only national meet appearance as a team in program history thus far.  The Maverick men also finished seventh in 2015 and 2016 and took eighth in 2021 and 2022.  They were 18^th in 2023 and 12^th last year in Travis Floeck's first year with the program.
 
The ninth place finish in 2024 was the Maverick women's best since 2016, when they finished eighth.

Sixth place finishes in 2008 and 2014 are the women's program's best.  The 2014 finish was good enough to earn a national championship bid for the first time.
 
The Maverick women have been represented at the national meet in each of the last three years qualifying individuals in 2022 (Kira MacGill) and 2023 (Kirstin Williams) before qualifying a team for just the second time in program history last year.
 
Region Honors
 
In addition to running for the NCAA qualification spots, runners in Saturday's races will be attempting to earn all-region honors from the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association.  The organization will recognize the top 25 individual finishers in each race at each of the eight regional championships with all-region honors, which will be officially announced next week.
 
Nine previous Mavericks have combined to win 13 combined all-region honors.  Kirstin Williams was the last to do so, taking 23^rd at the 2023 regional.
 
Current Maverick Kira MacGill, who ran for the first time in three seasons at the RMAC Championships a fortnight ago, was an all-region performer in both 2021 and 2022 while Tony Torres was the last Maverick man to do so in 2022.
 
Alexis Skarda is the program's only 3-year all-region performer (2008, 2010, 2011) while Daniel Vavrik is the only men's 2-time honoree (2014, 2015).
 
Meanwhile, Alexia Chapman, Lauren Lipski and Reanna Jereb all earned the plaudits in 2016 in the only previous year in program history has been that the Mavs women have had multiple selections.
 
Up Next
 
If the Mavericks do not automatically qualify as a team or individual runners for the national championships, they will await the official selection announcement, which will be posted on NCAA.com on Monday (Nov. 10), to see if they will continue their season at the NCAA Division II National Championships on Nov. 22 in Kenosha, Wisconsin.