JACKSONVILLE, Fla.—It only took Haftu Strintzos (Melbourne, Australia) a single lap to go from the back of a field of 48 runners to being even with the lead in the national semifinal round of the 10,000 meters at Hodges Stadium on Wednesday night. Strintzos finished sixth in the race on the first night of the NCAA East Preliminary and punched his ticket for a third straight trip to the NCAA Championships as a qualifier in the 10K. The first or four days of competition this week on the University of North Florida Campus featured competition for Villanova in the javelin, the 1500 meters, the 800 meters and the 10,000 meters.
 
The other highlights for the Wildcats on Wednesday were a trio of runners who moved on to the national quarterfinal heats in their respective events. Junior distance runner Liam Murphy (Millstone, N.J.) and sophomore Sean Donoghue (Dublin, Ireland) each advanced out of the first round in the 1500 meters, Murphy by winning his heat and Donoghue with a well-timed lean across the finish line to secure a top-five finish and an automatic qualifying spot in Friday's quarterfinals. Senior middle distance runner Sean Dolan (Ewing, N.J.) advanced through the first round of the 800 meters and is the third-fastest qualifier for the quarterfinals.
 
It was the last event of the night that gave Villanova its first chance to have an NCAA Championships qualifier. There were 2800 meters gone by (seven laps out of 25) in the 10K and Strintzos was biding time at the very back of a crowded field of runners. By the time he finished his eighth lap around the Hodges Stadium track, he and Dylan Jacobs of Tennessee were virtually even with each other at the front of the pack. Strintzos had run consecutive laps of 1:12.50 and 1:13.02 after the first mile of the race, but his next lap was 1:08.03 and he ran comfortably at or near the front of the race the rest of the way.
 
Cutter competed in the 10K semifinal for the second straight year and moved up 27 spots from where he finished last season. He placed 17^th overall and crossed the line with a time of 29:45.91; a strong closing kick enabled him to hold off runners from Iona and Providence by less than a second at the finish. Phillips is a veteran competitor at the NCAA East Preliminary but raced in the semifinal round of the 10K for the first time in his career after previously running the same round of the 5000 meters the past two seasons.
 
The first track event for the Wildcats on Wednesday was the first round of the 1500 meters in which the quartet of Murphy, Donoghue, redshirt freshman Devon Comber (Ambler, Pa.) and senior Charlie O'Donovan (Cork, Ireland) were spread across three separate heats. Donoghue was the last of the three to run and he had arguably the most dramatic finish with a surge across the line to record a time of 3:46.30.
 
The top five finishers in each heat and the next four fastest times advanced to the quarterfinal round on Friday evening. Comber was fourth in his section and needed the automatic qualifying spot; the four on-time qualifiers for the next round came out of the second and fourth heats. Official splits from the third heat had Donoghue in seventh at the start of the bell lap, while his lean at the line moved him on to the quarterfinal by a margin of four-tenths of a second. The last automatic qualifier from Donoghue's heat crossed the finish line just five-hundredths of a second behind him.
 
Murphy won the second heat in 3:45.00 and is the fifth-fastest qualifier for the next round. He closed in 53.89 over the final 400 meters, more than four-tenths of a second better than the next-fastest split on the bell lap. He and Donoghue will run on Friday at 5:15 p.m. when the top 12 finishers out of 24 total will advance to the NCAA Championships.
 
Wednesday night marked the career debuts of both Murphy and Comber in the NCAA East Preliminary. Comber came in eighth in the opening heat in 3:47.91, less than one-tenth of a second ahead of O'Donovan who was ninth in 3:47.99. Both runners (Comber and O'Donovan) had scored in the event last week at the BIG EAST Championships.
 
The first round of the 800 meters was smooth sailing for Dolan, who ran in the fifth heat out of six and finished with a time of 1:48.34 to grab the last of three automatic spots from each heat into the quarterfinal round. Dolan's section was a fast one and produced the five best times of the night, including the top two on-time qualifiers for Friday night. The top nine finishers in the heat were within a second of each other at the finish line. Less than half a second separated the first five runners. Dolan held off Ben Nagel from Virginia Tech by just four-hundredths of a second to be an automatic qualifier. He will be seeking his second straight outdoor NCAA Championships appearance when the quarterfinal goes off on Friday at 7:05 p.m.
 
Grinnell and Coffey got the day started for Villanova with competition in the javelin, each of them competing at the NCAA East Preliminary for the second straight season. In the first of three flights Grinnell registered a throw of 56.96 meters on his first throw of the day. Coffey was the first athlete to throw in the second flight and his best mark of 61.74 meters came on hi second attempt.
 
The meet shifts to women's competition on Thursday when the Wildcats will have entries in the javelin (1:30 p.m.), the pole vault (6:30 p.m.), the 800 meters (7:50 p.m.) and the 10,000 meters (9:10 p.m.).