BOSTON, Mass.—Senior middle distance runner Sean Dolan (Ewing, N.J.) moved on to the final of the 800 meters after winning his preliminary heat at the 2024 NCAA Division I Championships on Friday afternoon. Dolan won the second of two heats in 1:47.57 to automatically move on to tomorrow's final. It is the second time in his career and the first time indoors that Dolan will compete in the championship race of an individual event at the NCAA meet.
 
Dolan had the fifth-fastest time overall among the eight qualifiers for Saturday's final at the TRACK at new balance. He moved to the front of the pack at the midpoint of Friday's race and maintained the lead for the final two laps. The top three finishers in each heat and the next two fastest times advanced to the national championship race. Dolan and the other automatic qualifiers in the second heat were separated by just one-tenth of a second at the finish line. Each of the on-time qualifiers came from the first heat.
 
The second heat was paced for the first 400 meters by Tarees Rhoden of Clemson, who was then second behind Dolan for the final two laps. Rhoden finished in 1:47.66, followed by Darius Kipyego of Iowa State in 1:47.67 and Tinoda Matsatsa of Georgetown in 1:47.81.
 
It was the third time this season that Dolan and Matsatsa ran in the same heat of an 800 meter race. At the Penn State National Open in January, it was the first-year collegian Matsatsa who crossed the line nine-hundredths of a second faster than Dolan (1:46.87 to 1:46.96). In the final at the BIG EAST Championships last month, Dolan bested Matsatsa (1:46.90 to 1:46.98) to make conference history as the first athlete to win three career indoor BIG EAST titles in the men's 800 meters.
 
Saturday will be an exciting day for Villanova with four athletes in competition at the NCAA Championships. The action begins for the Wildcats when senior Roschell Clayton (Montego Bay, Jamaica) gets underway in women's high jump at 1 p.m. in her indoor NCAA Championships debut. Later in the afternoon, Dolan races in the final of the 800 meters at 4:30 p.m. followed by the duo of senior Liam Murphy (Millstone, N.J.) and sophomore Marco Langon (Raritan, N.J.) in the 3000 meters at 5 p.m.