On Saturday, Jan. 25, Villanova track and field competed in the Penn 10 Elite at the newly-built Ott Center in Philadelphia. Several Wildcats made their indoor debuts, and many seasoned veterans gained personal records throughout the day.
Penn 10 Elite featured Villanova athletes running, jumping, and throwing alongside some of the best collegiate track teams in the country. Harvard, Brown, Princeton and Cornell were just a few of the schools in attendance.
A photo finish for the mile unfolded after junior Marco Langon beat out teammate and fifth-year Liam Murphy with a dive for first place.
“That might be a Marco-esque signature,” Villanova men’s track and field coach Marcus O’Sullivan said. “I think he was determined to get Liam [Murphy], but I think they’ll be very good for each other in terms of boosting each other’s competitiveness.”
Langon accomplished a lifetime best of 3:54.60, while Murphy was one-hundredth of a second behind at 3:54.61, landing him in second place. Their times placed the distance runners in the Villanova record books as the fourth and fifth-best indoor mile times in school history. Murphy now holds three out of the five fastest indoor mile times at Villanova.
Langon and Murphy currently have the seventh and eighth-fastest indoor mile times in the NCAA this season.
A trio of Wildcats, made up of seniors Emma McGill and Emily Robinson along with freshman Bella Walsh, ran together in the women’s mile. With a time of 4:38.42, McGill fought for a lifetime best and fourth in the race. Robinson managed a personal record at 4:44.63 to reach seventh place. Not far behind, in ninth place, was Walsh in her track debut in the mile, receiving a time of 4:45.75.
Wildcats took first and second place in another race on Saturday, this time in the men’s 3,000-meter. Redshirt freshman Bailey Habler accomplished the 10th fastest time in the country at 7:49.53.
“I think he wanted to go faster,” O’Sullivan said. “But he did take control of the race from like a thousand meters out, and it wasn’t as competitive to push him on with somebody else there. Looking at him running the last five laps on his own, I think you can get lulled into a sense of it’s hard to keep pressing on your own. If you have somebody on your shoulder, it’s so much easier.
Shaving nearly three seconds off his personal best with a time of 7:56.65, senior Devon Comber pulled off second place in the 3k at the Ott Center.
Senior Alex Payne threw for a personal best of 16.76 meters in the shot put. Her distance puts Payne at fourth on the Big East performance list, and she now accounts for five out of the 11 of the longest throws in school history. The men’s 4×400 meter relay consisting of sophomores Matthew Griffin and Ethan Walls, along with juniors Ronan O’Neill and Sal Barretta ran a 3:16.51 to finish fifth place. The performance marks the second-best time in the Big East this season.
Pulling off the third-best time in the Big East women’s 800-meter, first-year Rosie Shay managed a time of 2:11.60 in her first collegiate track race. Next to cross the finish line was junior Micah Trusty. With a time of 2:13.14, Trusty sits fourth on this season’s Big East performance list.
In the final event on Saturday, senior Margaret Carroll reached a time of 9:23.83 for the women’s 3,000-meter race. Lowering her personal best by over 13 seconds, Carroll took eighth place at the meet and fifth in the Big East.
“It’s predominantly all aerobic work. So coming off the cross-country, you have a lot of aerobic work,” O’Sullivan said. “And everything from the half mile up is very, in my mind, very aerobically dominated.”
After only their third meet of the indoor season, the Wildcats are finding their footing on the track again, while still accomplishing impressive feats so early into the year. Villanova women’s and men’s track and field will compete in the Penn State National Open this weekend. The two-day meet begins on Friday, Jan. 31 in University Park, PA.