RAPID CITY, S.D. – For the first time in program history, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs track and field program are Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference (RMAC) Champions for women's outdoor. The UCCS men's team came back to climb up the standings and claim a second place finish after being in fifth place coming into Championship Sunday.

The Mountain Lion women posted 161 team points in their championship run as they cemented the first place spot with a 33.5 point cushion over second place Colorado School of Mines. On the men's side, the Orediggers took home the championship with 162.5 points, as UCCS battled their way into second place with 122 points.

Another gusty day in South Dakota did not throw the Mountain Lions off their game as they came to combine for eight individual RMAC titles and 16 podium finishes.

UCCS' men's team had a lot of ground to cover coming into Sunday as the team had 29 overall points. However, Colton Homuth got the team going on the right foot with a bronze finish in the shot put (16.40m). The throws student-athlete also went on to repeat the third place finish in the discus with a heave of 45.03m to record his second podium finish of the day.

In the first running events, both the men's and women's team quickly began to rack up points as the 4x100m relay teams ran to second place finishes. Sprinter Deshon Elcock ran a leg in the men's 400m relay to help win silver, and then carried on to be a machine as he topped the competition in the 100m (10.60s) and 200m dash (21.40s) to take gold. The junior kept it going by helping keep the men's 4x400m relay team in the top eight, ending his day with two RMAC Titles (20 points) and being selected Athlete of the Meet.

UCCS women's sprinter Kayla Zink was no stranger to the podium as she ran her way to a second place time of 11.75s in the 100m, and taking first place in the 200m with a time of 24.28s. The women's 100m and 200m turned out to be an outlet for points as UCCS accumulated 32 points between both events to help propel themselves over Colorado School of Mines, who had a half point lead over the Mountain Lions before the events. Freshman Brittany Fuchs added fifth place finishes in both the 100m and 200m with times of 12.22s and 25.06s respectively, as Shewli Ghosh (12.29s) and Dejah Glover (25.48s) notched sixth place finishes in the 100m and 200m, respectively.

After running a leg in the men's 4x100m relay, Charlie Forbes started to tally points by taking the RMAC Title in the 110m hurdles in 14.96s to record 10 points. Later in the day, Forbes made another podium appearance by taking second in the 400m hurdles with an eight-point time of 54.28s.

Heading into Sunday with the top prelim times in the 1500m and 800m, senior Skylyn Webb continued the same pattern by becoming RMAC Champions in each event. Webb completed the women's 1500m in 4:34.71, and finished the 800m in 2:15.55 to register 20 points for the women's point total. UCCS was able to rack up points in the 800m as they began to separate themselves from the pack with Ellie Enderle contributing three points with a sixth place time of 2:17.65, and Maia Austin throwing in two points with a seventh place time of 2:20.39.

Junior Will Ross put an exclamation mark on the jumps events as he leaped to an RMAC Champion distance of 14.75m in the triple jump, while freshman Dakota Abbott placed more black and gold on the triple jump podium by registering a third place mark of 14.48m.

To top off what would be a championship day for the Mountain Lions, Kaija Crowe claimed her second RMAC Title by jumping over a mark of 1.63m in the high jump, and running a leg in the women's 4x400m relay team with Dejah Glover, Jalen Jordan, and Cameron Tracy to win silver. Crowe put her multi event talents on display this weekend by competing in all three days and taking first place in four out of the seven events in her heptathlon champion run. The sophomore recorded 25 total points over the course of three days, tallying the most by any student-athlete in the black and gold.  

It was an exciting day for UCCS Athletics, and UCCS Track & Field Head Coach Ross Fellows could not be more proud of his team's performance this weekend:

"It was an outstanding day and the women showed up with a vengeance," Fellows said. "This was a great team effort. I have to give credit to our amazing coaching staff and support staff. The entire crew did an incredible job, and it's a great day to be a Mountain Lion!"

The Mountain Lions will take a week off before heading out to a variety of last chance meets over the weekend of May 10-12, as they look to add to their list of national qualifiers. Stay tuned to gomountainlions.com for meets and dates.