GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— Making history by hosting it, the Colorado Mesa University women's lacrosse team, will hope to make more history by winning this weekend's Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Tournament at Community Hospital Unity Field.
The Mavericks are hosting the event for the first time in program history as the No. 1 seed and clinched a share of the conference's regular season title and hosting rights via a goal differential tie-breaker over No. 2 seed Regis, which has been the No. 1 seed and tournament host in each of the past four years.
CMU, 10-5 overall, finished the regular season with a 9-1 record and will take on No. 4 seed Westminster University (7-8, 4-6 RMAC) for the third time this season in the first of two semifinals on Friday.
Regis, ranked 14
th nationally and 11-4 overall, is the No. 2 seed and will take on No. 3 seed UCCS (9-5, 6-4 RMAC) in the second semifinal at 7 p.m.
The two winners will then meet in Sunday evening's championship game at 5 p.m.
The tournament champion will receive the conference's automatic qualification spot in next month NCAA Division II Tournament.
All of this weekend's games can be streamed on the RMAC Network via a paid subscription.
Tickets can be purchased through the RMAC's ticketing platform.
All of the links can be found above.
Last Times Out
The Mavericks took care of business on the road last week, claiming comfortable 16-2 and 20-5 road decisions over Fort Lewis and CSU Pueblo last Thursday and Saturday, respectively.
Those wins allowed the Mavs to share the RMAC Regular Season title with Regis, which also claimed a road win over UCCS on Friday afternoon to finish with a 9-1 RMAC mark.
Freshman
Cassidy Keykal made the first two starts of her collegiate career and led a balanced attack in both games, recording a hat trick (3 goals in each).
The Mavs had nine different goal scorers in Thursday's win over Fort Lewis, including five who scored two goals. The Mavs scored the game's first ten goals to implement a running clock just 20 minutes into the game.
On Saturday, the Mavs jumped out to a 15-1 lead at the mid-way point of the third quarter as 12 different players scored. Keykal was one of six that had two mor more goals.
The Mavs were able to give significant playing time to their reserves as the starters dominated the early going of each to earn time off later in the games.
Recaps of both victories can be found below:
Key(kal) to the club
Freshman
Cassidy Keykal became the eighth different Maverick to join the hat trick club this season as she recorded three goals in each of last week's wins, registering the first two hat tricks of her career.
Courtney Havel and
Caroline Ohngemach are the leaders of the club as each have recorded three or more goals in a game seven times this season.
Justine Anderson (4),
Carson Dickey (2),
Courteney Murray (2) and
Mikki Brown have also recorded hat tricks this season.
Title Two
The Mavs' win over CSU Pueblo on Saturday allowed the Mavericks to claim a share of the RMAC Regular Season title for the second time in program history. They also shared the 2023 title with Regis.
Ten Wins
The Mavs' win over CSU Pueblo was also their tenth of the season. The Mavs have now reached double figures for wins in each of the last four seasons and eight times in their last nine full seasons since and including 2016.
Tourney Time
The Mavericks have appeared in all ten previous editions of the RMAC Tournament since the conference began sponsoring the sport in 2014 and have won a game in each of the last seven since and including 2017. There was not a tournament in 2020 due to COVID.
The Mavs are 7-10 all-time in the tournament but have never won it.
They have made it to the championship game in each of the past four years, falling to Regis in Denver each time. If the Mavs and Rangers were both to win on Thursday, the teams would meet in the championship for the fifth straight time, but for the first time on the Western Slope.
The Rangers are the only current RMAC member to have ever won the tournament title, doing so on seven occasions, including in 2014, 2017 before starting a streak of now five consecutive titles in 2019. Lindenwood won the other three titles in 2015, 2016 and 2018.
50-50-50
Three Maverick standouts have now recorded 50 or more offensive points this season.
Justine Anderson leads the group with 58 (32G, 26A) while
Caroline Ohngemach has 55 (35G, 20A).
Courtney Havel leads the team with 44 goals and has 53 points as well.
The Mavs have three of the RMAC's seven 50-pointers this season, all of whom will be in Grand Junction this week.
UCCS' Sarah Urbanic leads the conference with 56 goals and 75 points while Anderson is second in the league for assists (26) and points (58). Ohngemach ranks fourth in the RMAC for points while Havel is tied for fifth.
CMU last had three 50-pointers in the same season in 2022, when now assistant coach
Kiley Davis led that year's team with 60 points ahead of Taylor Jakeman (55) and Melanie Evans (54).
The 2019 Maverick squad, the only won to have ever reached the NCAA Tournament, had five 50-pointers and is the only CMU until to have had two players reach the 60-point mark in Paige Elliott (82) and Olivia Hayden (77), which are the top two single-season totals in program history.
Anderson's 58 points this year are already the tenth highest total in program history.
Regional Rankings
The Mavericks are ranked sixth in the official NCAA Division II Midwest Regional Rankings, which were released in numerical order for the first time on Wednesday afternoon. They were also amongst the eight teams in last week's rankings, which were released in alphabetical order.
Six teams from the region, made up of 27 eligible institutions from four conferences, including the RMAC will be selected for the NCAA Tournament. The conference tournament champions from the Great Lakes Valley Conference (GLVC), Great Midwest Athletic Conference (GMAC) and RMAC will all receive automatic bids while the other three teams will be selected at-large based on the final regional rankings.
The Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC) does not have an automatic bid because they only have five women's lacrosse playing members, one shy of the mark of six to qualify for an automatic bid.
The GLVC has the top two teams in the rankings with Maryville and Indianapolis. Regis is third.
Grand Valley State from the GLIAC is ranked fourth ahead of Rockhurst from the GLVC.
UCCS is seventh while Missouri Western, which plays out of the GLVC, is ranked eighth.
The GMAC does not have any teams in the rankings but one team will receive the automatic qualification bid.
The Mavs currently have the tenth best strength of schedule in the region at .529 through Sunday's and ranks sixth in the region for RPI (.582) and seventh in the performance indicator category at 13.400. They are 10-5 in Division II and 10-3 in in-region contests, marks that also put the Mavs sixth and fifth in the region.
They are 4-4 against teams at or above .500 or higher and have gone a combined 4-3 against the other teams on the list of eight regionally-ranked teams. The Mavs are 4-4 against all regionally-ranked teams as they also played one of the South Region's eight ranked teams this year, falling to Saint Leo during a Spring Break trip to Florida.
The Mavs could face UCCS or Regis again in the RMAC Tournament Championship but will likely need to win both Friday's semifinal and Sunday's championship to receive a bid.
Lacrosse Junction
Grand Junction will be a hotbed of lacrosse this week as CMU is hosting both the Rocky Mountain Men's Division Tournament and the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Women's Tournament this weekend at Community Hospital Unity Field. The women's tournament will be played on Friday & Sunday while the men take center stage on Thursday & Saturday.
This marks the first time in RMAC history that the same institution has hosted both tournaments.
CMU's women are also hosting for the first time in program history after winning a share of a second conference regular season title.
The Maverick men are hosting for the third straight and seventh straight time.
Additionally, Grand Valley Lacrosse is hosting their QuickStix youth tournament at Canyon View Park this weekend.
Defending the CHUF
The Mavericks have been historically good at home, posting a winning record on their home turf at Community Hospital Unity Field in each season since and including 2015. With their 4-2 home record so far this year, the Mavs are assured of yet another winning season and have gone 55-17 (.764) at home in the last ten-plus years and are 61-32 (.656) at home throughout the history of the program, which began in 2011.
They were 6-15 at home in the first four years from 2011-14.
The Mavs went 5-2 at home last season and were 6-1 in 2023.
This weekend's games will be the post-season contests at the CHUF.
RMAC Records
With their two wins last weekend, the Mavs have an even better 74-21 (.779) record in RMAC games, including two forfeit wins over Adams State in 2021 and 2022 that are not included in the Mavs' all-time overall record as those games were declared "no contests" by the NCAA.
Nineteen of the Mavs' 21 all-time RMAC losses have come to Regis, the only RMAC team to have beaten the Mavericks this decade. CMU has not lost an RMAC game to any other current conference member.
The Coach
The 2025 season is the second with Head Coach
Ashley Delaney running the Maverick program.
Delaney is no stranger to the squad and is in her sixth year overall after serving as an assistant for the previous four seasons from 2020-23.
The Mavs went 11-6 last season with Delaney in charge and posted a 33-19 combined record in her four years as an assistant under two previous head coaches.
She led the Mavericks to their history-making co-championship season this year and was the Mavs' top assistant when the Mavs won a share of the program's only other RMAC Regular Season title in 2023. The Mavs have also been in the RMAC Tournament Championship game every time with Delaney on staff.
Including this season, Delaney has a winning 21-11 record as a head coach. The Mavericks are a combined 54-30 with her on the coaching staff.
Delaney is 4-0 against Westminster and Griffin counterpart Jannel Snow as a head coach.
Know Your Foe
The Griffins secured fourth place in the RMAC standings with road wins last weekend at CSU Pueblo and Fort Lewis and will enter the RMAC Tournament with a 7-8 overall record, including a 4-6 conference record.
They have won four of their last seven overall but suffered losses to each of the other three RMAC Tournament teams in that stretch and are a combined 0-6 against the three other higher seeds.
The Griffins swept the final RMAC Player of the Week awards as Lexi Segaline scored ten goals while adding three assists in their two wins last week to claim the offensive award. Marianna Dick earned the defensive award after causing ten turnovers and securing eight groundballs.
Westminster sophomore Jordan Williamson leads the team with 46 goals and 52 offensive points and ranks third and seventh in the RMAC, respectively.
Olivia Petrosky has come on strong, scoring 18 of her 26 goals in the last seven games with four hat tricks, although she was held without a goal against the Mavs. Grace Szwedko also has 20 goals to her credit. Szwedko also leads the team with 68 draw controls.
Celia Fidanza leads the Griffins with 27 assists and leads the RMAC by one over CMU's
Justine Anderson.
Marianna Dick leads the RMAC with 50 caused turnovers while Riley Weldon is second with 44. Dick also ranks third in the conference with 48 groundballs.
Gabriella Cheminant and Kaelyn Hart have split time in net although Cheminant has emerged as the regular starter. She has an 11.50 goals against average and a .400 save percentage in 12 appearances spanning 563-plus minutes.
Hart has played in nine games and for nearly 336 minutes, recording a 10.54 goals against average and .478 save percentage.
Series History
The Mavericks have dominated the all-time series against the Griffins, winning the last 21 and 22 of the 23 all-time games, including two regular season victories this season.
The Mavericks won 17-6 at home on Mar. 22 and then won 20-5 in Salt Lake City on Apr. 5.
Westminster's lone win in the rivalry came on Apr. 6, 2012.
The Mavs have won the last ten home game against the Griffins since then.
Friday's game will be just the second RMAC Tournament match-up between the teams. The Mavs defeated the Griffins, 18-7 in the quarterfinal round of the 2019 tournament, which was played in St. Charles, Missouri and hosted by Lindenwood, which has moved on to the NCAA Division I ranks.
If the Mavs are able to continue their dominance of Westminster on Friday, they would play in the RMAC Tournament title game for the fifth straight year and meet either Regis or UCCS.
CMU is 2-33 all-time against Regis, including a 1-13 home record. The Rangers have won the last four RMAC Tournament title games.
The Mavericks are 15-0 all-time against UCCS, including a 5-0 home record. The Mavs have defeated the Mountain Lions in the semifinals of the RMAC Tournament in each of the last four seasons.
Up Next
If the Mavericks win the RMAC Tournament, they would be guaranteed a spot in the NCAA Division II Tournament for just the second time in program history (2019).
Although unlikely, the Mavs could still receive an at-large selection without winning the RMAC Tournament. The NCAA Tournament field will be announced on Sunday, May 4 with the tournament beginning on Thursday, May 8 on campus sites.
