With a balance of experience and youth, the Maverick’s expectation is to compete with the top teams in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference (RMAC).
The Colorado Mesa University (CMU) Men’s and Women’s Cross-Country Teams both have their best runners returning for their senior seasons.
With their seniors returning, they are looking to compete with the RMAC greats like Adams State University and Western Colorado University.
“My philosophy isn’t high mileage for everyone. We have a couple of people on our team that aren’t going to do high mileage because that’s what they need to be great,” CMU Cross-Country Head Coach, Tim Reetz, said.
The men’s team is returning Jerod Kuhn who was the top runner in every meet last year. He is the only cross-country runner of either gender in CMU history to win an RMAC Runner of the Week.
Kuhn earned those honors after placing 11 at the Fort Hays State Tiger Open, posting a career-best 8K time of 25:04.2.
“I want to try and stick with the team and have a nice team pack for the meets,” Kuhn said. “I was going to try and have a time goal, but it’s hard with the meets, and Western’s up at 7500 feet where it is going to be hard.”
Redshirt sophomore Ian Cropp has been pushing Kuhn in practices as he has asserted himself as one of the top runners for the Mavericks. Cropp competed in all five of the Maverick’s meets last season with a season-high placing of 32 in the Mountaineer/Cowboy Invite.
Kuhn said that Cropp became one of the vocal leaders on the team after spending the summer in Grand Junction. Cropp led unofficial practices with some of his teammates during the summer helping him grow into a leadership role for the team.
CMU opens its season with the Mountaineer/Cowboy Invite hosted by WCU in Gunnison, Colo.
“It’s pretty much elevation, it’s a pretty flat course. The reason it’s hard is the elevation and it’s our first race of the season,” Kuhn said. “For me personally, that makes it hard because I don’t really know how to race, and it takes time to get used to 8Ks.”
Senior Lindsay Parsons, freshman Kira MacGill and redshirt freshman Ivory Espinoza lead the way for the women’s team.
“I would say we really like to focus on packing,” junior Kendra Eickleberry said. “There’s going to be a couple of people who are going to have good days and bad days, but in the beginning, we really like to stick together, not a full-on sprint or anything like that but a really strong first mile.”
Parsons had a strong junior campaign and is looking to outdo herself this season. Parsons’s placed 15, a season beat at the Mountaineer/Cowboy Invite. The Maverick’s run their only scheduled race of the season in the Mountaineer/Cowboy Invite.
This will be Espinoza’s first year with the Mavericks as she transferred from the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. She received the Cross-Country Athlete of the Year Award while in high school running for the local Central High School.
MacGill is a graduate from Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colo. She helped the Warriors win the state title in 2019 as she finished in the 25 spots.
Redshirt junior Kenzie Mente and Eickleberry will be the other leaders for the young women’s cross-country team.
Mente’s season-best 5K time was 20:01.8 in the Fort Hays State Tiger Open. She continues to push herself in practice to prepare herself for the Mountaineer/Cowboy Invite which is arguably the toughest race of the season.
“This year, I started around in the 40s, which is pretty low because of COVID and everything in the summer,” Mente said. “Usually, I’m up in like 60 to 70 range as an upperclassman, but I’m just slowly getting the miles back, and in a few weeks, I’ll be back where I was mileage wise.”
Eickleberry had a career-best 6K time of 25:08.1 in the RMAC Championship as she peaked at the right time. She started running around 35 miles a week for her training but after three to four weeks of training, she is close to 50 miles a week.
The Maverick’s first meet is the Mountaineer/Cowboy Invite on Sept. 19 with the women starting at 11:15 A.M.
