EUGENE, Ore.—After a one-year absence the outdoor NCAA Track & Field Championships returned on Wednesday with the start of men's competition at renovated Hayward Field. Villanova sophomore Haftu Strintzos (Victoria, Australia) ran in the outdoor national championships for the first time and placed 19^th in the 10000 meters while senior Casey Comber (Maple Glen, Pa.) competed in the semifinal heats of the 1500 meters. Their performances wrapped up men's competition for the Wildcats for the collegiate season, which encompassed cross country, indoor track & field and outdoor track & field in the space of a few short months.
 
Strintzos has run three races in the 10000 meters this season and has lowered his time in each successive race. He crossed the finish line in a new lifetime best of 28:51.06 on Wednesday night and recorded the fifth-fastest time in school history. Strintzos had qualified for the national championships when he posted a mark of 28:52.71 at the NCAA East Preliminary two weeks ago. He now owns three of the top eight times in the 10K in the Villanova record book despite being new to the event this year in his first collegiate outdoor season.
 
The national championship race was run in ideally cool and damp conditions after a steady rain fell on the track earlier in the evening. After the pack of 24 runners started to breakup near the midpoint of the race, Strintzos found his typically steady rhythm during the final 5000 meters. Twelve of his final 13 laps around the oval were within two seconds of each other in the 70-71 second range per lap. The race went out at a meet-record pace nearly from the start and the first 10 runners across the finish line all broke the previous meet record of 28:01.30 which had stood for 42 years.
 
Strintzos fared well considering the blistering pace and was just four seconds off the lead at the midpoint of the race. He is the first Villanova runner to qualify for the NCAA Championships in the 10000 meters since 1993 when Terrence Mahon tallied an eighth place finish at the meet.
 
The first individual track event of the night was the semifinal heats of the 1500 meters. Comber is a former finalist in the event after placing eighth at the 2019 national championships. He ran in the second of two heats on Wednesday afternoon and recorded a time of 3:40.98 to finish seventh in the heat. The top five finishers in each heat and the next two fastest times advanced to Friday's national championship race, but each of the two on-time qualifiers came from the first heat which was the fastest semifinal in NCAA history.
 
Comber used his previous experience at the national championships to put himself in position to contend early in the race. His split of 60.33 on the first full lap around the track was the fastest among the 12 runners in the heat. Comber made another surge coming down the straightaway approaching the start of the bell lap – his penultimate lap was a split of 57.94 – and kept his position until the final turn before a tight finish which saw the top seven runners cross the line with a gap of just 2.64 second separating them.
 
Running the 87^th race of his sensational collegiate career and his 78^th officially wearing the Villanova singlet, Comber ended what has been a terrific outdoor season. At the Joe Walker Invite at Ole Miss in April, he recorded a lifetime best mark of 3:37.76 in the 1500 meters to earn his qualifying spot for the NCAA East Preliminary. The time stands as the 10^th-fastest that any Wildcats runner has recorded during their collegiate career and is also the fifth-fastest time by a Villanova runner during the NCAA competition season. Comber placed fifth in the 1500 meters at the BIG EAST Championships and was an automatic qualifier through the national first round and quarterfinal heats at the NCAA East Preliminary two weeks ago.