Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Western Colorado’s Cade Michael and South Dakota Mines’ Margaret Thompson are the 2021 Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference (RMAC) Cross Country Summit Award winners, the league announced Friday.
 
Michael claims the men’s award for the No. 10-ranked Mountaineers as a redshirt senior for the WCU cross country program. The Midland, Texas, native holds a flawless 4.0 grade-point average (GPA) as an economics major at Western Colorado. In his time with the Mountaineers program, he has pushed his squad to a second-place team finish at the 2020 RMAC Men’s Cross Country Championships with a 20th-place individual finish. A transfer from Texas State, Michael has claimed three top-10 finishes since joining the WCU program for the 2020 season. In the 2021 campaign, the redshirt senior has secured a ninth-place finish at the Wyoming Invite (Sept. 3), a first-place finish at the Mountaineer/Cowboy Invite (Sept. 18) and a 43rd-place finish at the Chile Pepper XC Festival (Oct. 1).
 
Thompson secures the women’s cross country award after registering a perfect 4.0 GPA as a mechanical engineering major at South Dakota Mines. As a junior on Hardrockers’ women’s cross country team, Thompson has made appearances at the 2019 RMAC Championship and the 2019 NCAA Division II South Central Regional Championship. In her most recent performance of the 2021 season, the junior secured a personal best time in the 5k event at the Fort Hays State Tiger Open, crossing the finish line with a time of 20:44.6. At the 2021 Gage McSpadden Memorial XC Invite (Sept. 17), Thompson registered a sixth-place individual finish.
 
The RMAC Summit Awards are presented to student-athletes with the highest cumulative GPA that are also competing at the site of the finals for their sport’s championship. All GPAs are based on a straight-grading scale to ensure consistency among nominees. All ties are broken by the total number of credit hours completed through the most recently concluded semester.
 
To be eligible for the award, student-athletes must be a sophomore or above, who have participated in their sport at their institution for at least two years. Student-athletes must be active members of their teams, traveling and competing at the RMAC championship event. Graduate students are not eligible to win the award.
 
Michael and Thompson will be honored Saturday, Oct. 23 upon the conclusion of the 2021 RMAC Championships, which are set to be hosted by Colorado School of Mines at Applewood Golf Course in Golden, Colo. For more information on the championship events, visit the 2021 RMAC XC Championship page.