If you ask most people about CMU’s Track and Field, they may not even know that it exists. However, there is a men’s track team at CMU this year, and it’s an official school sport.

A team made up of mostly freshmen, the Maverick track team is one of the newest sports on campus. Starting out as a club sport last year, the Mavs have competed in three competitions thus far with two of them at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

“Being a part of the first men’s track team means that we have to set the bar for all the years to come for the program.” freshman Justin Wallace said.

Wallace, a long jumper, has helped put the Mavericks into the spotlight after a solid performance in the Blue & Silver Invite last Dec. with a 13.9 meter leap. The official score on the jump was 15.9 meters, but there may have been a technical difficulty on the scoring.

“I want to set a high standard for the horizontal jumps such as the triple jump and long jump,” Wallace said. “I want to go down in the record books for a long time just to be able to say I did it one day.”

He holds the CMU record for long jump, as he is the only one to do it so far.

Despite being a team for a short period of time, the Mavs have had their ups and downs. At semester, the team lost a few members as well as one of the coaches.

“The men that have stuck it out are incredibly dedicated and make us tough,” Wallace said. “The resilience we have would be one of our strengths.”

Wallace not only wants overall team success this year but he also wishes to place top three in the RMAC by the end of the year. The Mavericks have a promising future but Wallace urges for more people to come out and join the team.

“We are looking to get more athletes out on the track,” Wallace said. “We are small as of right now.”

The Mavericks are in Colorado Springs this weekend for their third meet at the Air Force Academy. They will have no home meets this season.