PHILADELPHIA, Pa.—The depth of the Villanova roster was on display at the Penn Relays this weekend as the Wildcats entered the Championship of America races in all three men's distance relays for the first time in nine years. After winning thrilling titles in the distance medley relay on Friday afternoon and the 4xMile relay earlier on Saturday, the final championship race of the weekend saw Villanova hang with the top teams until the final leg of the 4x800 relay.
 
"It's progress," Wildcats head coach Marcus O'Sullivan said. "You have got to have depth [to run all three distance relays]. You could see that we probably have the deepest team in terms of the 4xMile, but even on the 4x8 there were three guys who didn't run earlier in the day. All in all it's a great place to be. We have had some years [without that depth] so it's nice to have some offset with a couple races yesterday and today at such a high level of racing."
 
A team consisting of Sean Donoghue (Dublin, Ireland), Dan Watcke (Hinsdale, Ill.), Jamie Moreland (Los Angeles, Calif.) and Sean Dolan (Ewing, N.J.) finished fifth in 7:17.28, the sixth-fastest time in school history and the Wildcats fastest 4x800 race since a Championship of America victory a decade earlier. Donoghue ran the leadoff leg of the 4xMile just two hours earlier, while the duo of Watcke and Dolan ran on Villanova's champion DMR to kick off the weekend. Moreland, a Division III All-American at Haverford who is in his first year with the Wildcats, ran in his first career Championship of America race.
 
"Jamie ran great," O'Sullivan said. "That's a whole new endeavor for him coming from Division III and now he's moving into an area which is high end, and a lot is to be expected. He showed up today."
 
Donoghue opened the 4x800 with a split of 1:52.07 on the first leg, followed by a 1:48.05 split from Watcke on the second leg. Four teams were separated by less than six-tenths of a second halfway through the race and Moreland took the baton at the second exchange. He stayed with the leading pack until the final strides before the handoff for the anchor leg when Texas A&M and Oregon made a move to pull away from the rest of the field. Moreland had a split of 1:48.80 and Dolan anchored in 1:48.37.  
 
There was still one more race to come for Villanova as it qualified for the college section final in the 4x400 meter relay. After posting a time of 3:14.13 in the heats on Friday night, the Wildcats recorded a season best and BIG EAST leading time of 3:11.43 which was good for a third place finish in the final. The lineup for Saturday's race had Nicholas Mollica (Jackson, N.J.) leading off followed by Jimmy Milgie (Wildwood, Mo.), Jakob Kunzer (George Town, Grand Cayman) and Luke Rakowitz (Dallas, Texas).
 
Mollica and Milgie ran the same legs as they did on Friday night, while Kunzer moved from the anchor position to the third leg and had a split of 47.48 in Saturday's race. That made room for Rakowitz, who ran the 400 meter leg of the champion distance medley relay Friday afternoon and came back to record a personal best 47.73 split in Saturday's 4x400 final.
 
Senior thrower Nick Coffey (Cranston, R.I.) qualified for the championship section of the collegiate men's javelin for the second straight year and was in action at the Irving "Moon" Mondschein Throwing Complex on Saturday afternoon. He recorded a ninth place finish in the competition with a mark of 57.21 meters.