The Maverick’s men’s and women’s cross country teams ran well against the nation’s best at the hosted the Maverick Invitational on Oct. 10.
Colorado Mesa University’s (CMU) women’s cross country team placed fifth with an average time of 20:11 at the 5k home meet in Lincoln Park on Saturday, October 12.
Coming in 14, freshman Kira MacGill came in at 18:47.6.
“That was a lot of fun […] I’m a little disappointed I didn’t have more in the last 200, but I felt like I had a good stride in the last 100. It was really cool to get to compete with Adams and Western, they have some of the top girls in the nation, […] I’m proud to see what our girls have done and I think our coaches did a really good job setting all this up,” MacGill said.
Senior Lindsay Parsons came in 28 at 19:32.8.
“I was really nervous going into the race, the coaches had some pretty big goals for me but I was just trying to set them aside and run my own race. I feel like this was one of my best races mentally. […] I went out with the pack the first mile, which helped me not go too fast but got me into a rhythm,” Parsons said.
The Mavericks competed with Adams State, Western Colorado, Metropolitan State (MSU), and Westminster (Utah). They will get the chance to compete with these teams again at their next race, taking place at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (UCCS).
“The girls did awesome, we had a bunch of our mid-pack girls steps up and our top two had another great race,” Assistant Coach, Shane Niksic, said. “Our number one girl had a great race at Western and had an even better one today. Then our number two, who’s one of our veterans, had a great race. We had a couple of girls with injuries over the past weeks so they’ve just been helping. Today was kind of a tempo for them, they all crushed it.”
The CMU men’s team placed third with an average time of 25:48 in their 8k. Juniors Tony Torres came in sixth with a time of 25:01.2 and Mark Testa came in eighth with 25:19.2.
“I think the team had a really good race. Most of the guys were finishing together as a pack. It feels really nice being able to wake up in my bed […] you just feel like you’re at home and there are more fans,” Torres said.
Senior Jerod Kuhn placed 11 with a time of 25:24.4.
“Western a couple weeks ago was a little rough for me, the first race of the season, my legs weren’t going well, I had a calf injury, so I took the past couple weeks a little easier. As a group, I had Mark with me, and we just worked together passing everyone. It’s nice seeing so many people I know coming out and supporting us, which really helped me push through the tough times,” Kuhn said.
The men’s team competed with most of the same teams as the women’s, but with the added teams of Fort Lewis and Colorado Mountain College.
“On the men’s side, this is probably the best race we’ve had in team history. In 2014, we qualified for nationals and since then this is the best team we’ve had by far, and maybe even, in my opinion, better than that team. We had a bunch of freshmen step up. It couldn’t have gone any better for us,” Niksic said.
With high hopes of making nationals this year, Niksic also praised the veterans of the team, including Torres, Kuhn, Testa and redshirt sophomore Ian Cropp.
“It’s good for us to have a home meet. Everything about today went great,” Niksic said.
The Maverick’s next meet is the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Champions on Oct. 24. The time for the race is to be determined currently.
