BETHLEHEM, Pa.—The reemergence of the Villanova women's cross country team on the national scene is nearly complete after the Wildcats put themselves in excellent position to earn an at-large berth to the NCAA Championships with a fourth place team finish at the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional on Friday afternoon. Villanova scored 78 points and had its top four runners earn all-region honors based on finishing in the top 25 of a field that numbered more than 210 runners. The team will now await the announcement of the NCAA Championships field which will be revealed on Saturday at 5 p.m. in an online selection show.
 
Friday's performance by the Wildcats was one of the best – if not possibly the best – by a team that finished in fourth place since the current regional format was instituted before the 2000 season. Based on immediately available information after the race, Villanova's team score of 78 points is the lowest by a fourth place team in at least the past 15 years and possibly longer. The four all-region honorees are also the most for the Wildcats since 2018.
 
Junior Tilly O'Connor (Spring Lake, N.J.) paced Villanova with the seventh-fastest time that a Wildcats runner has ever posted on a 6,000 meter cross country course. She covered the Goodman Campus Course at Lehigh in 19:41.8 and tallied her fourth straight race below 20 minutes. Villanova has had nine races of sub-20 minutes this season, with three of the nine occurring in Friday's regional meet. O'Connor was joined in earning all-region honors by graduate student Nikki Vanasse (Martinsville, N.J.), graduate student Margaret Carroll (Mount Wolf, Pa.) and senior Amelia Arrieta (Kansas City, Mo.).
 
Each of the four all-region performers tallied their best career finish in NCAA Cross Country regional competition. That includes the trio of O'Connor, Carroll and Arrieta all finishing more than two dozen spots higher in the ranks than they have previously. Vanasse finished 11^th in the field of 215 runners with a time of 19:49.2, followed by Carroll in 15^th place (19:55.6) and Arrieta in 18^th place (20:03.0). Sophomore Rosie Shay (Middletown, N.J.) was the Wildcats fifth scoring runner with a time of 20:27.6 in 29^th place.
 
Two runners in the Villanova lineup are in their first season of collegiate competition and held their own in their first regional races. Zoe Mosher (Pleasantville, N.S.) recorded a time of 20:47.6 and Sophia McInnes (Bayport, N.Y.) crossed the finish line in 21:30.3. They came in 36^th and 69^th, respectively, each finishing in the top third of the overall field.
 
The top four teams accounted for 17 of the 25 all-region spots. It was a close race for the title, with the quartet of West Virginia, Georgetown, Penn State and the Wildcats having just 22 points separating them. Villanova was two points behind third place Penn State while finishing 21 spots ahead of fifth place Princeton. The team scores in the top five included West Virginia (56), Georgetown (62), Penn State (76), the Wildcats (78) and Princeton (99).