DENVER – For the first time since 2009, MSU Denver is host to the RMAC Cross Country Championships.
 
"It's really exciting to get to race on our own course again," said Amanda Rego, MSU Denver's associate head coach. "We don't host the RMAC Championships very often. We have (NCAA Division II) Regionals quite a bit and we have our home meet every year, but there's something special about a conference championship. It's more of a school-pride thing.
 
"The regional is a business weekend – get the work done and try to qualify (for nationals). For conference, you get more pumped up and excited to compete, and for us it's competing in the best conference in the nation."
 
The Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference is, once again, a cross country juggernaut.
 
And that will be on display Saturday at Washington Park, with the 6-kilometer women's race set to start at 10:45 a.m. and the 8K men's race to follow at 11:35.
 
The women's race includes five of the top seven teams in Division II in No. 2 Adams State, No. 3 Colorado School of Mines, No. 4 Western Colorado, No. 6 UCCS and No. 7 CSU Pueblo as well as No. 13 Colorado Christian and No. 25 Fort Lewis.
 
For the men, the nationally-ranked teams include defending champion and top-ranked Colorado School of Mines, No. 4 Adams State, No. 5 Colorado Christian, No. 7 Western Colorado, No. 23 UCCS, No. 27 New Mexico Highlands, No. 29 CSU Pueblo and No. 30 Fort Lewis.
 
MSU Denver will be looking to break into that elite group once again. The Roadrunners have finished as high as third and no lower than ninth in every women's RMAC Championship since 2017, while the men have finished as high as fourth and never lower than ninth since the program was restored in 2005.
 
"We like to use this weekend to see where we're at going into regionals," Rego said. "We definitely want to improve upon our places of last year (the men were seventh, the women ninth), so if the men and women can finish in the top seven this meet, then that's a good goal. Individually they all have their certain place-range goals to hit, but at the end of day it's go out and give what you have."
 
This kicks off "championship season" for the MSU Denver programs, a stretch that includes the Division II South Central Regional on Nov. 4 in Lubbock, Texas.
 
"This is the time of year where we were meant to peak, and it's really the first opportunity to see the teams in full force and in peak shape," Rego said. "That rest of the season we train fairly hard close to the races, and this week we're a little more rested. We've done some shorter, faster sharpening workouts to prepare, and now is the point where all of the training has led up to, to culminate in the last three or four weeks of the season. I'm excited to see what we can do coming off that type of training."
 
Individually, both Noel Lopez and JJ Ramey for the men, as well as Mia Salas and Abi Read for the women, appear to have excellent chances of earning All-RMAC first team (top 14 finishers) or second team (15^th through 28^th place) status.
 
Lopez was 16^th for All-RMAC second team last year, while Ramey didn't make the all-conference list but ran to all-region honors (top 25 finishers) in the following race. Salas, a transfer from Augustana (S.D.), is a past All-American in cross country, while Read was 38^th at last year's RMAC race.
 
"The goal for those four is to see how high up they can finish," Rego said.
 
After the expected top two finishers, it's a matter of getting five of the nine-runner contingents across the finish line as quickly as possible.
 
The rest of the men's lineup is Brenden Sands, twins Jonathan and Jordan Duran, Ty Schauer, Cory Shea, Shota Yabuuchi and Elijah Garcia. For the women it's Taylor Engram, Caitlin Cornell, Audrynn Street, Marissa Bruno, Tanis Chavez, Heidi Yagen and Aubrie Nicholas.
 
"We've had some key sessions in practice that we do every year, and several of the returners have had by far their best sessions compared to other years," Rego said. "So the fitness is there, we just have to execute it in the race. We have started to tighten those gaps and train more as a pack, and if we can replicate that in the race, then we'll be a lot better team than we were at the beginning of the season.
 
"Our depth is exciting, because there are several people who could be up there scoring for us, on both the men's and women's sides – there are more than just five people who are ready to step into those roles, and that's what we need to be really good at the championship level."