BOSTON, Mass.—Junior distance runner Tilly O'Connor (Spring Lake, N.J.) is the 11^th woman in Villanova history to break 16 minutes in the 5,000 meters and she did so for the first time in her career with a PR of 15:56.27 at the Sharon Colyear-Danville Season Opener on Saturday afternoon. O'Connor was one of five Wildcats who competed in the 3,000 meters and the 5,000 meters on Saturday at the Track & Tennis Center at Boston University.
 
The mark of 15:56.27 is the ninth-fastest indoor mark in school history and puts O'Connor into seventh place on Villanova's all-time list of top indoor performers in the 5,000 meters. She was not the Wildcats only runner to impact that performance list in Saturday's races. Graduate student Margaret Carroll (Mount Wolf, Pa.) recorded a PR of 16:01.51 to move into ninth place in the school record book for the indoor 5K. She cut more than 13 full seconds off her previous top time (16:14.66) which she ran at the outdoor BIG EAST Championships earlier this year. O'Connor, meanwhile, was running the first 5K track race of her collegiate career in Saturday's indoor season opener.
 
Senior Amelia Arrieta (Kansas City, Mo.) made it a trifecta of PRs for the Wildcats in the 5K. She posted a time of 16:37.67 and – like Carroll – lowered her career PR by more than 13 seconds. Arrieta previously posted a mark of 16:51.09 indoors at the BIG EAST Championships this year.
 
Earlier in the afternoon, the duo of graduate student Nikki Vanasse (Martinsville, N.J.) and sophomore Rosie Shay (Middletown, N.J.) competed in the 3,000 meters. Vanasse registered a lifetime PR of 9:13.28 and was the eighth-fastest runner out of 100 entries in the seeded section of the meet. The graduate transfer from Columbia has run two cross country seasons for Villanova (2024, 2025) but was making her track debut in a Wildcats singlet on Saturday. She lowered her previous top time of 9:19.97 from February 2022 by more than six seconds. Shay opened her indoor season with a time of 9:26.61 in the 3K.
 
In the past several years the Sharon Colyear-Danville meet has become a fixture nationally on the early season indoor track & field calendar. Many of the top collegiate distance runners are in peak form coming out of cross country season and are primed to put up top times on the track which can stand up for NCAA Championships qualifying later in the season.
 
The five runners who competed for Villanova on Saturday were the team's five scorers at each of three postseason cross country meets: the BIG EAST Championships, the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional and the NCAA Championships. They helped the Wildcats earn a team berth to the national meet for the first time since 2021 after posting a runner-up finish at the conference championships and registering a total of six top-two team finishes during the season.