INDIANAPOLIS— Eight Colorado Mesa University track and field athletes have been selected to compete in the NCAA Division II National Outdoor Championships, which will be contested next Thursday through Saturday (May 21-23) in Emporia, Kansas.
 
The Maverick qualifiers include three men's individuals in Teo Casados (200 meters), Joseph Randolph (200) and Izaak Siefken (javelin), three women's individuals in Megan Hodges (5K), Kammi Merritt (400 hurdles) and Hannah Schissler (200) as well as the men's 4x100-meter relay, which includes Casados, Randolph, Marik Cummings and Amaris Mora.
 
The relay team is the first Maverick men's squad to ever qualify for the national championships.  That squad set a school-record smashing time of 39.62 (39.74 altitude adjusted) seconds at the Maverick Early Bird Open, which ended up being the fifth fastest on the season-long NCAA Division II National Performance List.
 
The six Maverick individuals were all amongst the top 22 declared athletes on that list in their respective events.
 
Another in Antone Higgs was part of a 3-way tie for 21^st in the men's triple jump but was left out of the national meet based on tie-breaking procedures.
 
Casados will be making his second straight national outdoor and third straight overall national championship appearance.  He earned U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association All-America honors with an seventh place finish at this year's indoor championships after taking 15th at the 2025 outdoor meet.  He is seeded 19th this year with his season-best altitude-adjusted time of 20.86 seconds, which came from his school-record setting effort of 20.79 seconds that he used to win the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference title for the second straight year.
 
He also repeated as the 100-meter champion and anchored the Mavericks to a second place effort in the 4x100-meter relay while garnering meet MVP accolades.
 
Randolph, a 4-time all-America honoree at the NAIA level for Olivet Nazarene (Ill.) University, also qualified for the national indoor meet in the 200 meters but was disqualified for a lane violation.  He posted a wind-aided, but legal NCAA qualification time of 20.70 seconds at last weekend's Franson Last Chance meet to qualify and will be seeded 11^th.
 
Siefken broke his own Maverick school record with a javelin throw mark of 68.75 meters (225 feet, 7 inches) and will be the No. 11 seed in his NCAA Championship debut and finale.  He has won the past two RMAC titles.
 
Hodges, Merritt and Schissler will all be making their NCAA Track & Field Championship debuts although Hodges has twice qualified for the national cross country meet as the leader of the Maverick squad in that discipline.
 
She is seeded 15^th in the 5K with her altitude-adjusted time of 16:29.41 posted on May 1 during the Western Slope Conversion Classic, that CMU hosted.
 
Merritt is seeded ninth in the 400-meter hurdles with her school-record setting time of 58.89 (59.00 altitude adjusted) seconds from the RMAC Championships as she won the silver medal.
 
Schissler is 17^th in the 200 with her time of 23.59 seconds from the Franson Last Chance meet.  She also won the RMAC title.
 
The NCAA Championships will be streamed on NCAA.com.  Live results and the qualification lists can be accessed here.