VILLANOVA, Pa.—Graduate middle distance runner McKenna Keegan (West Grove, Pa.) from the women's track & field team along with sophomore Sean Dolan (Pennington, N.J.) and senior Malik Cunningham (St. Andrew, Jamaica) from the men's team are all headed to the 2022 NCAA Division I Indoor Championships on March 11-12. The list of accepted athletes into the national championships meet was released on Tuesday night and Villanova will be represented with a pair of 800 meter runners in addition to Cunningham in the triple jump.
 
Keegan, Dolan and Cunningham will head to Birmingham, Ala. where the  NCAA Championships will be held at the Birmingham Crossplex. The semifinals of the men's and women's 800 meters are on Friday, March 11, while the national championship races in those events as well as the men's triple jump competition take place the next day. All three of the Wildcats accepted athletes to the NCAA meet won individual BIG EAST titles in their respective events last weekend.
 
Of particular note for Villanova this season is Cunningham qualifying for the NCAA Championships for the first time in his career. Cunningham will be the Wildcats first triple jumper to reach the national meet since Jermaine Deans (1997-00) was an NCAA qualifier in both the triple jump and the long jump during his collegiate career. Deans, Cunningham and Villanova jumps coach Anthony Williams are each Jamaican natives who come from the same high school (Jamaica College).
 
Cunningham is having the best season of his career and passed Deans in the triple jump by a centimeter to take over second place on the Wildcats all-time performance list. He recorded a lifetime best mark of 16.12 meters during the Tiger Paw Invite at Clemson on February 12 to earn his NCAA qualifying spot. Cunningham's mark is the fourth-longest indoor triple jump in school history and puts him behind only two-time national champion Nate Cooper in the program's record book. Deans' collegiate personal best in the triple jump was a nearly identical 16.11 meters recorded during the 1998 indoor season.
 
This is the second straight year that Dolan and Keegan will compete at the indoor NCAA Championships. Dolan set the indoor school record in the 800 meters at the BIG EAST Championships last weekend when he won the conference title with a time of 1:47.53. He beat John Marshall's previous indoor mark of 1:47.84 which had stood for more than 40 years since 1982. Dolan was a first team All-American in the Mile as a redshirt freshman last year and this season he posted top-20 national times in both the Mile and the 800 meters.
 
Following his first year of collegiate competition Dolan was a semifinalist in the 800 meters at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials last summer. He ran as fast as 1:46.41 in the 800 meters last Spring and becomes the first Villanova men's runner to qualify for the NCAA Championships in the 800 meters since Samuel Ellison in 2014. Dolan opened the 2022 indoor season by running 1:48.11 in the 800 meters at the Penn 10-Team Select in January. That is now the third-fastest indoor time in the Wildcats record book after Dolan's record-setting time last weekend. He also ran 3:56.39 in the Mile during the indoor season.
 
Keegan is a three-time All-American in the 800 meters, including earning first team honors after placing seventh at the indoor NCAA Championships last season. This year she has run as fast as 2:03.48 at the Husky Classic in Seattle which stands as the third-fastest indoor 800 meters in the Villanova record book. Keegan and former teammate Siofra Cleirigh Buttner are the only runners in Wildcats history to break 2:04 during the indoor season.
 
 
Last weekend Kegan won her second career title in the 800 meters at the BIG EAST Championships. She posted a winning time of 2:06.02, ran the 400 meter leg of the team's champion distance medley relay and anchored the 4x800 meter relay squad to a third place finish and All-BIG EAST honors. Like Dolan, Keegan competed in the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in the 800 meters last summer. She qualified for the Trials after running 2:01.25 during the NCAA East Preliminary in May. The time is the fastest in school history to be run during the NCAA season.
 
The semifinal heats of the men's 800 meters are on Friday, March 11 at 5:45 p.m. Eastern time (4:45 p.m. Central time), followed by semifinal heats of the women's 800 meters at 8:45 p.m. Eastern time. The final of both events take place the next day, with the men's national championship competition in the triple jump beginning on Saturday, March 12 at 4:45 p.m. Eastern time.