HAVERFORD, Pa.—In the first race of the season Villanova swept the top three finishing spots and had seven of the top nine runners at the Main Line Invitational on Friday evening. Leading the way for the Wildcats was junior Maggie Smith (Yorkton, Ont.) who paced the field of 76 runners with a winning time of 16:20.0 on the Alumni Course on the Haverford College campus. Freshman Sadie Sigfstead (Edmonton, Alta.) and senior Lydia Olivere (Wilmington, Del.) competed the top three for Villanova and posted times of 16:21.2 and 16:25.4, respectively.
 
The nearby meet just minutes away from campus has been the Wildcats traditional season opener in cross country for most of the last 20 years. With their times in Friday's race Smith and Sigfstead posted the seventh and eighth fastest times for any Villanova runner on the three-mile Haverford course. Smith previously came in second at this meet as a freshman back in 2019 in a similar finish to Sigfstead finishing as the runner-up in her own collegiate debut on Friday evening.
 
Redshirt freshman Kendra Lewis (Vancouver, B.C.) came in fifth overall with a time of 17:03.1 and junior Anna Helwigh (Soborg, Denmark) finished sixth in 17:07.3 to round out the Wildcats scoring runners. Villanova finished with an almost perfect total of 17 points to finish ahead of Penn (62) and La Salle (74) in the field of seven competing teams. Lewis was one of six athletes in the Wildcats lineup of 13 runners who were making their collegiate debut with Friday's race; two others ran their first collegiate cross country races after competing in track & field last spring.
 
Freshman Emily Robinson (Rogers, Ark.) was another of the Villanova runners making their debut and she came in seventh with a time of 17:10.9. Graduate student McKenna Keegan (West Grove, Pa.) came in ninth while sophomore Elizabeth Vaughn (Dayton, Ohio) was 13^th in 17:26.7. Keegan was racing for the first time since the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in the 800 meters this past summer.
 
The freshman duo of Margaret Carroll (Mount Wolf, Pa.) and Maya Dorer (New York, N.Y.) finished consecutively in 21^st and 22^nd places. Carroll posted a time of 17:48.6 and Dorer finished in 17:50.5 in their debuts in a Wildcats singlet. Freshman Alex Stasichin (Massapequa, N.Y.) came in 30^th in 18:19.8 and junior Nikki Merrill (Portsmouth, R.I.) was 35^th with a time of 18:48.3. Rounding out the lineup were sophomores Marcella Krautzel (Kennett Square, Pa.) and Kate Flynn (Gray, Tenn.) with times of 19:30.2 and 21:13.1.
 
Villanova will be back in action on October 1 when it competes in the Paul Short Run at Lehigh.