NEW YORK—Graduate middle distance runner McKenna Keegan (West Grove, Pa.) was named the BIG EAST Women's Track Athlete of the Week in an announcement made by the conference office on Thursday afternoon. It is the first time in her career that Keegan has been a BIG EAST weekly award winner and the accolade comes on the heels of her running one of the top times in the nation in the 800 meters last week.
 
Keegan ran her first race of the season in the 800 meters at the Husky Classic last Saturday afternoon and recorded a time of 2:03.48. Throughout her career Keegan has done it all for Villanova, racing at distances on the track ranging from 200 meters to 1000 meters in addition to contributing as a scorer in the team's lineup during cross country season. The 800 meters has been her signature event however, and she was a qualifier for the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in June 2021 after her time of 2:01.25 at the NCAA East Preliminary meet was the fastest ever recorded by a Wildcats runner during the NCAA competition season.
 
Last week's race in the 800 meters and the time of 2:03.48 for Keegan impacted both this year's NCAA Division I Indoor Qualifying List and the all-time Villanova indoor performance list in the 800 meters. Keegan won her race and now ranks third on this year's national descending order list which will be used to determine which athletes will be selected to compete in the NCAA Championships next month. Keegan is in strong position to return to the national meet as an individual qualifier for the second straight year, while her time also leads the BIG EAST this season by a margin of nearly two seconds. Keegan was a first team All-American in the 800 meters during the 2021 indoor campaign and ran nearly a full second faster last week in Seattle than she did in the final at the NCAA Championships a year ago.
 
Only two Villanova runners – Keegan and former teammate Siofra Cleirigh Buttner – have ever broken 2:04 in the 800 meters during indoor competition. Keegan's time of 2:03.48 in her race on Saturday is third on that list behind Cleirigh Buttner's indoor school record of 2:02.46 from the 2018 NCAA Championships and a mark of 2:02.97 which was recorded one year earlier.