VILLANOVA, Pa.—The season opener for the Villanova women's cross country team is on tap for Friday afternoon when the Wildcats compete in the annual Main Line Invitational hosted by Haverford. The early meet is the first chance for head coach
Gina Procaccio and her team to gauge their training progress to this point as they gear up for the year of competition to come both in cross country and eventually the indoor and outdoor track & field seasons.
A yearly staple on the Villanova schedule and frequently the team's season opener, the Main Line Invitational women's race is shifting a new distance this year as a 5,000 meter race. It is only slightly longer than the three-mile distance the Alumni Course on the Haverford campus has hosted previously, although the race will now finish on the Featherbed Fields adjacent to the starting line. The meet attracts several of the local teams, including La Salle, Penn and Temple among Division I squads.
Procaccio has enviable depth on her team entering the 2024 season. Villanova's five scoring runners last year were the same in every meet, and each of the quintet returns this year. Senior
Sadie Sigfstead (Edmonton, Alta.) is the reigning Mid-Atlantic Region individual champion and was an individual NCAA qualifier last year. She is joined among the five returning scorers by fellow seniors
Emma McGill (Lebanon, N.J.),
Margaret Carroll (Mount Wolf, Pa.) and
Emily Robinson (Little Rock, Ark.) along with sophomore
Tilly O'Connor (Spring Lake, N.J.).
The returning scorers are not the only ones on the Wildcats roster with high-level experience. Fifth year collegians and graduate transfers
Nikki Vanasse (Martinsville, N.J.) and
Lizzie Martell (Essex Junction, Vt.) join the team after completing their undergraduate careers at Columbia and New Hampshire, respectively. Vanasse was an All-Northeast Region performer last year and was previously a second team All-Ivy League honoree in cross country. Martell has similarly been an all-conference runner during her collegiate career and adds to Villanova's depth of experience.
Friday's meet is the first of two September competitions on the Wildcats schedule and it will be quickly followed by the Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational next week which takes place on this year's NCAA Championships course at the University of Wisconsin and the Thomas Zimmer Championship Cross Country Course. Following next week's Nuttycombe meet, Villanova will continue its training for the season and will not race again until October 18 at the Princeton Fall Classic.
In last year's Main Line Invitational, the Wildcats quartet of Sigfstead, McGill, Carroll and Robinson were the top four finishers out of 74 athletes in the three-mile race. Sigfstead's winning time of 16:00.5 is the fastest that any Villanova athlete had ever run on the course and a mark which will stand the test of time now that the course is being slightly lengthened into a 5K race.
