VILLANOVA, Pa.—One by one, the superlatives started to pile up as Saturday's events unfolded. Then they just kept coming. More event titles than any other team. The highest individual point scorer in the meet. A historic double in events not frequently run together. Finishes so good you had to see them to believe they were real. At least one championship in every discipline. A championship meet record set. A facility record tied. Quite a weekend for Villanova, which hosted the 2024 BIG EAST Track and Field Championships presented by JEEP and finished second in the team race with 141.5 points.
 
Fifth year sprinter and hurdler Jane Livingston (Lancaster, Pa.) was the women's high point scorer in the meet with 20 points, just as she had been earlier this year at the indoor conference championships. She made history on Saturday as the second women's athlete in conference history to win BIG EAST titles in the same calendar year in both the 60 meter dash and the 60 meter hurdles indoors, as well as the 100 meter dash and the 100 meter hurdles outdoors. Only two previous athletes had ever pulled off the 100 meters/100 meter hurdles double before, and Livingston was the only athlete in this weekend's meet who competed in both events.
 
The other individual champions for the Wildcats on Saturday were first year Olivia Allen (Kingwood, Texas) in the 400 meter hurdles, fifth year Madison Martinez (Gahanna, Ohio) in the 800 meters and fifth year Adria Retter (Quakertown, Pa.) in the discus. Villanova also won the 4x400 meter relay with a lineup of sophomore Myonica Jackson (Bolingbrook, Ill.), Allen, Martinez and sophomore Micah Trusty (Philadelphia, Pa.). Earlier in the week senior Roschell Clayton (Montego Bay, Jamaica) was the champion in women's high jump.
 
No other school in the 10-team field won more than four events this weekend. Villanova has won at least five gold medals in nine of the last 10 outdoor conference championships, including seven or more event titles in three of the last five seasons. This year also marked the ninth time in the last 10 outdoor BIG EAST meets that the Wildcats finished on the awards podium with a first or second place team finish.
 
The final straightaway of the 800 meters and the 4x400 relay were sights to behold. Trusty had the lead in the 800 meters going into the final turn but was passed by Nora Haugen from St. John's with less than 100 meters to go. It was Haugen, Trusty and Daylee Braden from Marquette coming down the home stretch. Martinez? She was behind Braden before making a tear from fourth place to first in the last 50 meters for her first career outdoor title in the 800 meters. Her winning time of 2:04.18 was three-hundredths of a second faster than the old meet record which had been set in 2014 by eventual national champion Sabrina Southerland.
 
Trusty wound up in fifth place at the line, although she was far from finished with dueling against Haugen for the day. Both runners were their team's anchors in the 4x400 relay and Haugen was steps away from winning the race for the Red Storm before being nipped by a charging Trusty at the finish line. It was a near photo finish and the outcome was unknown until the final times flashed up on the scoreboard behind the finish line. Villanova in 3:40.00. St. John's in 3:40.01. It is only the third time in the last 27 seasons that the Wildcats have won the outdoor BIG EAST title in the 4x400 relay.
 
By comparison, it is the third time in the last four years that a Villanova thrower has won the discus. Retter joined former Wildcats Grayce French (2021) and Jul Thomson (2022) with recent gold medals in the event after she threw 49.73 meters in Saturday's competition. Retter entered the competition as the top seed and had already scored in the hammer earlier in the week (and added a third top-eight finish in the shot put later on Saturday). She was in third place going into the final but recorded her best mark of the day on her fifth throw to clinch the gold medal in her best individual event. Retter is a former Division III national champion in the discus at Swarthmore and she owns the third-longest throw in Villanova history recorded earlier this year.
 
Allen also won her first career individual BIG EAST title after entering the competition as the top seed. She broke one minute in the 400 meter hurdles for the first time and finished first in 59.75, a time which moved her from 10^th place into sixth on the Wildcats all-time performance list. Allen is the first Villanova runner to go under a minute in the 400 hurdles since Danielle Burns in 2019. Burns was also the team's last 400 meter hurdles champion in 2021.
 
Last season, Livingston was the defending champion in the 100 meter hurdles and ran a clean race in the final only to be passed at the finish line by Jailya Ash from Connecticut. She later finished fifth in the final of the 100 meters. Call this season a redemption tour. Livingston beat Ash for the 60 meter hurdles title indoors this February. She faced her again in the final of the 100 hurdles on Saturday, where her own first year teammate Ajanae Thompson (Rahway, N.J.) was also a strong threat for the title. Thompson was the fastest qualifier coming out of Friday's preliminary heats.
 
Livingston was strong out of the starting blocks on Saturday and never looked back, winning in 13.67 ahead of Thompson in second place (13.72) and Ash (13.82) in third. It was a picturesque finish with Livingston, Thompon and Ash running next to each other in lanes 4-6. Less than 40 minutes later, it was a harder vantage point as Livingston and the rest of the field in the 100 meter final ran in reverse direction away from most of the crowd and into a legal headwind. Livingston was in lane 5 and got out strong but was challenged by Rebecca Ochan from Georgetown in lane 1 and others. The scoreboard confirmed Livingston as the champion with a winning time of 11.79, good for fourth on Villanova's all-time performance list. Livingston surged from ninth to fourth on that list over the past two days.
 
Fifth year thrower Jordan Williams (Fresno, Calif.) tallied an All-BIG EAST finish in the shot put on Saturday with a personal best mark of 14.33 meters. She too impacted a Wildcats all-time performance list as she moved from sixth to fifth in the shot put.
 
Villanova continues its season in two weeks at the NCAA East Preliminary meet in Lexington, Ky.