VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.—Junior distance runner Marco Langon (Raritan, N.J.) tallied the highest finish by a Villanova runner in the NCAA indoor 5000 meter championship and sophomore middle distance runner Dan Watcke (Hinsdale, Ill.) advanced to the final of the 800 meters to highlight a successful opening night for the Wildcats at the 2025 NCAA Division I Indoor Track and Field Championships. Langon placed sixth in the 5K championship race in 13:14.16, notching the second-best time of his career and the third-fastest in school history at the Virginia Beach Sports Center on Friday night.
 
Langon and fifth year teammate Liam Murphy (Millstone, N.J.) each competed in the 5000 meters and are two of the seven runners from the race who will return to the track on Saturday for the 3000 meter championship. They posted times of 13:14.16 and 13:23.91, respectively, and Murphy finished 11^th while running this event for the first time at an NCAA meet. The pair of teammates are the top two performers in school history in the 5000 meters.
 
It was an honest race from the start as some of the country's top distance runners dueled for 25 laps around the blue oval. Langon is a first team All-American for the first time in his collegiate career with his sixth place finish. His time of 13:14.16 is just .05 off the personal best that he ran in this year's season opener in Boston. The only other Villanova runner to tally a top-eight NCAA finish indoors in the 5000 meters is Patrick Tiernan, an NCAA cross country champion who placed seventh in the 5K at the 2014 indoor meet.
 
Langon took the lead in Friday's championship with five laps and 1000 meters to go. This came during a stretch of the race where he had the fastest split in the field for three consecutive laps and four out of five. He remained in the lead until there were less than 400 meters to go and wound up with a final lap of 28.15 to hold onto sixth place by just under a second.
 
This is the fourth career All-America honor overall for Langon and the seventh for Murphy, who previously finished fourth in the 3000 meters at least year's indoor NCAA meet to earn his best career individual finish on the track. Murphy is the school record holder in the 5K with a time of 13:10.62 last December, while his time of 13:23.91 on Friday night settles in at seventh on Villanova's all-time absolute performance list. Murphy is the 18^th runner in school history to earn at least seven career All-America honors. He has achieved the feat three times during the indoor season as well as twice outdoors and in cross country.
 
Watcke had a sensational finish in the first of two preliminary heats in the 800 meters. He went from the back of the pack to being an automatic qualifier for the final during the bell lap, making up significant ground along the way after leaving himself with work to do over the final 200 meters. It was the first career NCAA Championships race for the Wildcats emerging national standout, who advanced to the national quarterfinal of the event at the NCAA East Preliminary last outdoor season and went on to reach the 800 meter final at the World U20 Championships in Peru later in the summer.
 
It took the sixth-fastest indoor 800 meter time in school history for Watcke to move on to Saturday night's final. He crossed the finish line in 1:47.28 and held off Abdullahi Hassan from Mississippi State by a tenth of a second to secure the final automatic qualifying spot from his heat. Watcke already owns the two fastest indoor 800 meter races in Villanova history earlier this season, including his lifetime PR of 1:46.32 at Penn State on January 31.
 
Saturday's schedule for the Wildcats begins with Watcke's 800 meter final at 6:30 p.m., followed by Murphy and Langon returning to the track for the 3000 meter championship at 7 p.m.