Villanova’s men’s cross country team traveled to Charlottesville, Virginia this past weekend to kick off its 2023 season at the 8000-meter Virginia Invitational.

The meet featured eight of the top 12 teams from this past week’s United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) national rankings. Villanova entered the meet at number 12 in the Top 30 poll and finished ahead of three top-10 squads, thanks to its fifth place finish out of the 23 teams at the Invitational.

“We went down there primarily to do an early race, hoping we would have a more gentle start,” head coach Marcus O’Sullivan said. “But, everyone was thinking the same, and everyone came in for the early race.”

The Wildcats posted impressive early season times, as they were the only school to have three runners among the first 12 finishers in the 8,000-meter race. Liam Murphy came in seventh out of roughly 200 with a time of 23:32.2.

“[Murphy had] 2k (2000-meters) to go, which was little over a mile, and he was back in the high 20s, and he ended up finishing seventh,” O’Sullivan said. “So he came home probably one of the fastest 1000-meters of anybody in the field.”

Haftu Strintzos and Marco Langon kept it tight at the front, with Strintzos placing 11th with a time of 23:36.9 and Langon placing 12th with a time of 23:37.4. This kept the Wildcats competitive as their three finishers at the front brought down their total points. Sean Donoghue and Devon Comber finished in 138th (24:43.8) and 141st (24:46.3), respectively. Both passed a considerable amount of runners in their final 1000-meter stretches of the race. Jack Fredian crossed the finish in 143rd (24:46.7), followed by Jack Tavaglione (25:07.8) and Cole Walker (25:28.4), who posted times of 25:07.8 and 25:28.4, respectively.

As weather impacted the pre-race preparation, course conditions were difficult. With a one hour warmup slotted before every meet, the men were forced to cut it down to 45 minutes, arriving at the course as close as they could to start time.

Looking ahead, the team will now start preparations for its meet next month in Wisconsin. The Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational will kick off on Friday, Oct. 13.