GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— Teo Casados, Antone Higgs and the women's 4x100-meter relay team will represent the Colorado Mesa University track & field program at this week's NCAA Division II Outdoor Championships which will be contested between Thursday and Saturday at the CSU Pueblo ThunderBowl.

Casados will run in the 200 meters while Higgs will contest the long jump.

The relay team members include Serenity Burnett-Perry, Sylvia Johansen, Kammi Merritt and Gaby Horton.  Hannah Schissler is an alternate and will travel to the meet.

How To Follow

A complete meet schedule, for the 3-day meet which runs through Saturday, can be seen here.

The women's relay team will be the first Mavericks in action, competing in the preliminary heats on Thursday at 4:40 p.m.  Higgs will then contest the long jump that will begin at 5:30 p.m. that afternoon.

Casados will take to the track on Friday for the 200-meter preliminary heats at 5:45 p.m.

The finals for the women's 4x100-meter relay are slated for 5:10 p.m. on Saturday.  Casados' final would be that night at 7:55 p.m. that evening.

Live results can be accessed here.

The meet will be streamed for free on NCAA.com.

Tickets for the meet can be purchased through CSU Pueblo's championship webpage.

A daily recap of the Mavs' performances will be posted on www.cmumavericks.com each night.

New & Old

Casados and at least two of the Maverick women's relay team members in Johansen, Merritt and Schissler will be making their NCAA Championship debuts this week.

Higgs will be making his second NCAA Championship appearance of the season after finishing 15th in the long jump at the NCAA Indoor Championships in March.

Horton will be in her third NCAA Championship meet, having competing in the 200 meter individual event at both the 2024 and 2025 indoor championships.  She took 21st at last year's outdoor meet and finished13th at the 2025 indoor meet, setting a Maverick indoor record time of 24.03 seconds.

Burnett-Perry last competed at the NCAA Championships as a member of the Mavs' national-qualifying 4x100-meter relay team in 2021, her freshman season.  The Mavs finished 12th that year.

Seeding

Casados is seeded third in the 200 meters with his altitude-adjusted time of 20.42 seconds from the RMAC Championships (20.35 actual).

Higgs is one of three men that are seeded seventh with qualifying marks of 7.51 meters (24 feet, 7 ¾ inches).

The women's relay team is seeded 15^th with their altitude-adjusted time of 45.28 seconds (45.16-actual), set at the RMAC Championships.

The streaks continue

With the national qualifiers, the Maverick men and women have both extended a streak of having at least one NCAA Outdoor Championship qualifier to 11 consecutive seasons, streaks that began in 2014.

The Maverick men have now qualified at least one athlete for 22 consecutive overall NCAA Championships, both indoor and outdoor.

The Maverick women have had a least one qualifier in 12 straight meets, dating back to the 2019 outdoor meet.

All-America

All of the Maverick qualifiers will be looking to earn what would be their first career U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association All-America honors.

The top eight finishers in each event garner first team plaudits from the organization and will score

The ninth through 12^th place finishers in the individual events and then ninth and tenth place relay teams will claim second team honors.

All-Region

Seven Maverick athletes, including all six of the Mavs' national championship qualifiers, recently received USTFCCCA All-Region honors, that were annoucned last week. 

The top five individuals in each event and members of the top three relay teams from each region earn the distinction, based on the season-long performance lists.

The regions used for this award – Atlantic, Central, East, Midwest, South, South Central, Southeast and West – match those used during the cross country season.

CMU is a member of the South Central Region, which is made up of the Lone Star and Rocky Mountain Athletic Conferences, two of the best in all of Division II Track & Field.

Gaby Horton received two all-region honors, picking up one in the 100 meters while receiving another alongside her 4x100-meter relay teammates Serenity Burnett-Perry, Sylvia Johansen and Kammi Meritt.  Horton won four USTFCCCA All-Region honors this season.

The Maverick men had three all-region selections in Teo Casados, named as the region's top performer in the 200 meters, Antone Higgs (Long Jump) and Izaak Siefken, who fell just one spot shy of national meet qualification in the javelin.

Casados now has two career all-region honors to his credit having claimed the first during the 2024 indoor season.  Higgs and Siefken are first-time honorees.

Historic Award

Casados also made CMU men's track & field history as the first Maverick man to ever be named as the RMAC Track Athlete of the Year, an award which was announced by the conference on Monday following a vote of the conference's head coaches.

Casados won both the 100 and 200 meter titles at the RMAC Championships.

The Maverick men have now had a major award winner in each of the last three years as Dawson Heide (2023) and Zace Buckhold (2024) claimed the RMAC Field Athlete of the Year honors in the past two seasons.

Up Next

This weekend's meet will wrap up the Mavericks' season and the CMU overall all-sports calendar for the 2024-25 academic year.