PUEBLO, Colo. – The University of Colorado Colorado Springs track & field team completed the third and final day of the 2023 NCAA Division II Outdoor Track & Field Championships on Saturday evening with ten additional All-America honors as the men's team finished the meet with 19 points for a T17th place finish and the women's team scored three points to tie for 47th place.
 
INSIDE THE 2023 NCAA DIVISION II OUTDOOR TRACK & FIELD CHAMPIONSHIPS
Location: CSU Pueblo ThunderBowl | Pueblo, Colo.
Elevation: 4,700 ft.
Men's Day Three Score: 19 points (T17th)
Women's Day Three Score: 3 points (T47th)
 
HOW IT HAPPENED

• Fresh off shattering the program record for the men's 4x100m relay on Thursday in the preliminary round of the event, Mason Pastorello, Justice Mendoza, Kymani Sterling, and Brian Mosley Jr. were back on the hunt for history in Saturday's event final as they combined to improve on their school record time by one tenth of a second for a fourth-place time of 39.46s. With their fourth-place finish in the event, the group scored five points for the UCCS men's team and all four student-athletes earned First Team All-America status.
• Junior Kate Hedlund brought home another First Team All-America nod for the Mountain Lions in the women's 1500m as she raced to a seventh-place finish in the event with a time of 4:39.46 to score two points for the women's team.
• UCCS had a pair of student-athletes competing in the final of the men's 1500m and it was redshirt freshman Jagger Zlotoff that led the way for the Mountain Lions as he clocked a time of 3:54.86 to finish in seventh place overall and earn First Team All-America honors while also adding two more points to the total for the men's team. Redshirt senior Evan Graff also secured Second Team All-America accolades after finishing in 11^th place overall at a time of 3:56.75.
• In what turned out to be an extremely strong field for the women's 100m hurdles final, junior Melissa Moreni raced to First Team All-America honors as she broke her own school record in the event with a time of 13.60s to finish in eighth place overall. With her positioning on the podium, the Helena, Mont., native also scored one point for the women's team.
• Mendoza continued his strong meet in the men's 200m dash final, where he raced to a sixth-place time of 20.63s to collect his second First Team All-America nod of the evening and push three more points towards the men's side.
• Redshirt senior Afewerki Zeru closed his exceptional Mountain Lion career in the men's 5,000m race with one more First Team All-America honor as he crossed the finish line in 14:30.02 to take fifth place overall and score four more points for the UCCS men's team.
• Redshirt junior Audrey Bloomquist recorded a pair of solid marks in the women's triple jump final as she reached 12.25m on her first jump and 12.34m on her third jump, but her marks came up just shy of qualifying her for the finals in the event as she walked away with a 13^th place finish.
• In the women's 5,000m, sophomore Anna Fauske was the lone Mountain Lion in the competition, and she went on to record a 19^th place finish after crossing the line in 17:35.56.

BEYOND THE RESULTS

• The Mountain Lions combined to record a total of 12 All-America nods across the three-day national championship meet, including ten on the First Team and two on the Second Team.
• Pittsburg State University claimed the team title on the men's side with 62 points while Azusa Pacific University secured the women's team title with 66 points.

SOCIAL
Twitter – @GoMountainLions 
Instagram – @gomountainlions
Facebook – GoMountainLions 
 
As a member of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs competes in 16 varsity sports in NCAA Division II intercollegiate athletics.