NEW ORLEANS—Coming off of three consecutive team berths to the NCAA Championships and a top-20 national finish this past spring the Villanova men's cross country team comes in at No. 21 in the preseason national rankings announced by the United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) on Tuesday afternoon. A veteran Wildcats squad also was ranked at the top of the Mid-Atlantic regional poll which was released a day earlier. Villanova opens the season on September 17 at the Main Line Invitational hosted by Haverford.
Each of the seven runners who competed in the Wildcats lineup at the NCAA Championships in March return on the 2021 roster. The group is led by junior
Haftu Strintzos (Melbourne, Australia) who was named the Mid-Atlantic Region Athlete of the Year in the spring. Strintzos was the BIG EAST individual champion and led Villanova with a 66
th place finish at the national meet before going on to be an All-American in the 10000 meters for the outdoor track & Field season.
The trio of Strintzos, senior
Josh Phillips (Belrose, Australia) and senior
Charlie O'Donovan (Cork, Ireland) have each been scoring runners for the Wildcats at the NCAA Championships in each of the past two seasons. Phillips was the second Villanova runner across the line in the spring with a 67
th place finish while O'Donovan came in 109
th overall and was just 25 seconds behind his teammates ahead of him. Back in 2019 it was O'Donovan (second), Strintzos (third) and Phillips (fifth) in terms of the order of finish in the team lineup.
Graduate students
Nick Steele (Harvard, Mass.) and
Paul Nichols (Latham, N.Y.) were the other scoring runners for the Wildcats at the NCAA Championships in the spring. Villanova earned an at-large berth to the national meet after a third place finish at the BIG EAST Championships and went on to finish 20
th at nationals. It was the best team finish at the NCAA Championships since 2014 and a step forward for the Wildcats who had come in 23
rd one year earlier and were racing for only the second time in more than a year.
Villanova returns to a more traditional schedule this fall. Following the meet at Haverford to open the season the Wildcats will compete in the Paul Short Run at Lehigh (October 1) and the XC23 Invitational hosted by Virginia (October 15) before preparing for three postseason meets at the BIG EAST Championships (October 29; Carmel, Ind.); the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional (November 12; Bethlehem, Pa.); and the NCAA Championships (November 20; Tallahassee, Fla.).
