FAYETTEVILLE, Ark.—Senior middle distance runner McKenna Keegan (West Grove, Pa.) cemented her standing among the top 800 meter runners in school history with a sensational race in the semifinal heats at the NCAA Championships at Randal Tyson Track on Friday night. Keegan advanced to the final on Saturday evening with one of the fastest indoor times ever by a Villanova runner, while junior Sanaä Barnes (Keller, Texas) was also in action on Friday at the national championships and tallied her third career top-10 NCAA finish in the high jump.
 
The final of the 800 meters takes place on Saturday evening at 7:40 p.m. Eastern time and can be seen live on ESPN3. Keegan is the Wildcats third runner in the last eight years to advance to the final at the indoor NCAA meet after she ran a lifetime best of 2:04.56 in Friday's semifinal round. She tallied the seventh-fastest indoor mark in the Villanova record book, with only her former teammate Siofra Cleirigh Buttner running faster.
 
Keegan ran in the second of two semifinal heats and came in fourth in her heat to advance on time to the final. The second heat was easily the faster of the two sections and Keegan showed off impressive finishing speed with the fastest final lap out of the eight runners in her heat. She closed in 31.45 over the final 200 meters and powered down the final straightaway alongside Shafiqua Maloney of Arkansas with one of the two on-time qualifying spots comfortably in hand.
 
The top three finishers in each heat and the next two fastest times advanced to Saturday's final. Keegan's heat came through the opening 400 meters with the leading runner having a split of 59.81 over the first two laps around the oval, nearly two full seconds than the fastest 400 meter split from the first heat. After biding her time through the first half of the race, Keegan moved up into fourth by the start of the bell lap and was part of a group of four leaders who steadily pulled away from the chase pack.
 
Keegan is no stranger to top-level NCAA competition, but Saturday's race will be her first time competing as an individual in the final of a national championship. She previously was a part of the Villanova lineup of the distance medley relay at the indoor NCAA meet in 2017 and 2019, and as a sophomore during the 2018 outdoor season she advanced as far as the national semifinal heats of the 800 meters.
 
Earlier on Friday evening, Barnes competed in the high jump and tied for a 10^th place finish with a height of 1.76 meters. This is the third time in her career that Barnes has been an NCAA Championships qualifier. She led off Friday's competition as the first jumper and easily made it over the bar at the opening height of 1.71 meters (5'7 ¼"). Each of the 16 athletes remained in the competition when the bar was raised to 1.76 meters (5'9 ¼") and Barnes again made it over the bar on her first attempt.
 
The third height in the progression was 1.81 meters (5'11 ¼") and this was where the separation in the competition occurred. Only nine athletes made it over at that height and Barnes wound up tied for 10^th along with athletes from Kansas and Illinois State who also had not recorded a missed attempt at the first two heights.
 
Barnes is the only women's athlete in the history of the Villanova track & field program to be an indoor All-American in a field event and is also the lone jumper in school history to earn All-America honors at the NCAA Championships either indoors or outdoors. She is the school record holder in the high jump both indoors and outdoors, with her top collegiate mark of 1.84 meters (6'0 ½") coming during her freshman season.