Losing two athletes prior to last weekend's tournament, and two more at NMSU 7s, the Mavs were rolling into Denver with a diminished squad. As long as everyone stayed healthy, the team would be fine. However, with two late tournament schedule changes - the Mavs were no longer facing B sides and DII rivals, yet again they would be up against two deep rostered DI squads. And yet, still somehow, they almost pulled off two victories. 
 
The Mavs traveled nine healthy athletes to the University of Denver 7s tournament. With the schedule change the first matchup was against CUs A side. CU came out swinging and touched down first to lead the match 5-0. CMU bounced back slick step by Ellen Rickerd, try, and conversion to give the Mavs the lead 3 minutes in. Speedster Chloe Coop went for a big run on the outside and grew the lead to 14-5 with a Carly Scheck conversion. CU would score again just before half to cut the lead to 14-10. Coming out of half CU was yet again first to score. Taking the lead 14-15. Scheck answered back with a heads-up play, and a quick tap try to give the team back the lead almost at the end of regulation. With a conversion kick, she brought the team back ahead 21-20 for the last play of the match. Unfortunately, CMU lost the scrum, played an additional 2 minutes of regulation and ended up giving up the go ahead try in expired extra time. Mavs dropped this one 27-21.
 
Moving into the second match of the day, just 30 minutes after match one ended, CMU was yet again up against a CSU A Side. The banged-up team entered the contest, and it was CSU with two quick trys to give the rams the lead 12-0 3:30 in. Co-Captain Ellen Rickerd came up with a big run to put the Mavs on the board, but then also suffered an injury subbing out. CSU would tack on another try going into half, Mavs trailing 5-17. CU was first to score into the second half before Mesa went on a run. Ary Landis scored off a nice offload up the middle two minutes into the second half. She added a conversion kick to close the gap 12-24. Then Ashley Bollinger took off on a sneaky run and added another CMU try to bring the Mavs within seven points with 1:30 to play. At this point in time Chloe Coop was added to the injured squad and left the match. CSU would score at the end against a very broken CMU squad. This one ended 17-29.
 
With the injury toll racking up in a regular season friendly, the Mavs made the longevity decision to pull out from the rest of the DU 7s tournament. Keeping with that thought process, they also will not play this upcoming weekend at Utah State in the hopes of returning 8 healthy players back to the squad and going into the National Qualifier at UNC April 12th, with a very dangerous and fully healthy roster for the first time this season. Follow the team on Instagram @cmuwomensrugby for the latest update.