DENVER— Megan Hodges finished third overall as the top NCAA Division II runner to lead the Colorado Mesa University women's cross country team to a strong showing at Saturday morning's Roadrunners Invitational here at Washington Park.
 
The Maverick women also had two other runners in the top 20 and placed all five of their scoring runners in the top 35 overall en route to a second place team finish with 73 points.
 
NCAA Division I Colorado State won the meet with 22 points while having four of the top six finishers.
 
Meanwhile, the Mavericks finished higher than all six of their Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference foes in the field, including four of which are ranked in the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association's NCAA Division II Poll, which had CMU in the No. 25 spot entering the meet.
 
Earlier, CMU's men took seventh out of nine teams with 170 points.
 
Hodges finished the women's 6,000-meter course in 21 minutes, 58.9 seconds trailing only CSU's Tatum Berg and Allison Pippert.  Hodges was 12.2 seconds ahead of Fort Lewis' Alliyah Molina, who finished fourth in 22:11.1.
 
Autumn McQuitty and Jordan Staniszewski also finished in the top 20 for the Mavs as McQuitty placed 15^th overall, including 11^th amongst team scorers in 22:36.6.  Staniszewski was 20^th overall and 14^th amongst team scorers in 22:56.7.
 
Quin Gregg and Wehazit Kelati also fared well to round out the Mavs' team score.  Gregg was 24^th overall and scored 18 points while finishing in 23:01.9.  Kelati finished 35^th overall and had a score of 27 points after turning in a time of 23:25.2.
 
The Mavs' next three runners were within 7.5 seconds of Kelati as Kate Linstedt (23:28.8), Shirley Weaver (23:32.7) and Brooke Miller (23:25.2) crossed the finish line in 37^th, 40^th and 41^st place, respectively.
 
Miller was making her season-debut after leading the Mavs with an 18^th place finish at last year's meet.

UCCS, ranked seventh in the national poll, finished third in Saturday's race with 97 points while the host MSU Denver Roadrunners took fourth with 104.  The Colorado School of Mines, ranked fourth nationally finished fifth with 126 points while No. 19 Colorado Christian was sixth with 143 points.  No. 12 Fort Lewis took seventh with 183 points while unranked Regis was eighth with 235.
 
Chase Brown was the Mavs' top finisher on the men's side for the second straight meet.  He placed 13^th overall and seventh amongst team scorers with a time of 25:40.6 on the 8K course.
 
Owen Frank, 51^st in 26:5.93 and Jackson Baker, who took 57^th in 27:03.8, were just outside the top 50 and scored 35 and 40 team points, respectively.  Alex Spink was the Mavs' fourth finisher, placing 62^nd in 27:18.6 while Dillon Elliott placed 73^rd in 27:36.3 to round out the team's top five.
 
Mines won the men's team chase with 26 points while MSU Denver (89), edged CSU (90) and Fort Lewis (95) for second.  Emad Bashir-Mohammed, running unattached, won the race with a time of 24:21.6 while Mines' Chandler Wilburn was the top team finisher, placing third overall in 25:04.6.
 
CMU's next meet will be on Oct. 11, when the Mavs head to Romeoville, Illinois for the Lewis Crossover Invite.