PHILADELPHIA, Pa.—Graduate thrower Maria Deaviz (Souderton, Pa.) continued her rewriting of the Villanova record book in the shot put on Saturday afternoon with her second school record of the season. She threw 16.46 meters at the Penn Elite to notch the second-best indoor mark of her career and break the Wildcats existing standard which she herself set in her team debut just two weeks ago. Deaviz moved into the top 20 on the NCAA Division I performance list for the 2025-26 season with Saturday's performance at The Ott Center.
 
It was a big day on multiple fronts for Villanova, which had another round of sensational efforts from its emerging distance group. Sophomore middle distance runner Bella Walsh (Wilmington, Del.) won the mile and lowered her lifetime PR by well over 3.5 seconds in the process. She and junior teammate Tilly O'Connor (Spring Lake, N.J.) combined for a 1-2 finish ahead of the third place runner from BIG EAST rival Georgetown; O'Connor recorded her second PR in the mile in as many weeks. Graduate student Lizzie Martell (Essex Junction, Vt.) finished first in the 800 meters and a trio of Wildcats posted PRs in the elite section of the 3000 meters.
 
Deaviz took her turn in the spotlight midway through the afternoon with her mark of 16.46 meters. It came on her third throw of the day in the second flight of women's shot put and put her into second place in a field of 20 competitors. Deaviz continues to headline this year's BIG EAST performance list in the shot put by a margin of nearly two meters. She moved into 20^th on the Division I performance list pending the outcome of other meets around the country this weekend. Her mark of 16.46 meters trails only her indoor PR of 16.75 meters which was recorded on February 26, 2022, at the ACC Championships.
 
Saturday's meet was the second in a row in which Walsh has posted a breakthrough performance on The Ott Center track. She won the mile in 4:37.18, shattering her previous PR of 4:40.99 from last year's BIG EAST Championships. Walsh officially opened her indoor campaign last week when she posted a time of 2:43.28 in the 1000 meters. That is the fourth-fastest time in school history. Villanova comes out of the weekend laying claim to five of the seven fastest athletes in the mile in the BIG EAST this season.
 
O'Connor had won the mile at Penn last week in a PR of 4:37.64. It was her first career race under 4:40 and she repeated the feat while nudging her time down to 4:37.55 with Saturday's effort. Walsh and O'Connor held Barrett Justema from the Hoyas by just over a second at the finish line. The Wildcats now have four runners – Walsh, O'Connor, sophomore Rosie Shay (Middletown, Del.) and graduate student Margaret Carroll (Mount Wolf, Pa.) – who have gone below 4:40 over the last two weeks.
 
It was in the 3000 meters in which Shay and Carroll made their marks in Saturday's competition. Shay sliced more than 10 seconds off her lifetime best in the 3K and finished fourth in the elite section of the event in 9:13.24. Carroll and first year collegian Zoe Mosher (Pleasantville, N.S.) followed her with PRs of their own. They crossed the finish line in 9:14.66 and 9:18.12, respectively. Carroll lowered her top time by nearly five seconds, and Mosher shattered her previous by more than 23 seconds. She was running her first collegiate track race after running in the World Athletics Cross Country Championships for her native Canada just two weeks ago.  
 
Graduate student Nikki Vanasse (Martinsville, N.J.) ran a BIG EAST-leading time of 9:13.28 in the 3000 meters in the indoor season opener in Boston on December 6. She and her trio of teammates from Saturday now occupy the top four spots on the BIG EAST performance list, with Mosher more than six seconds ahead of the fifth-ranked runner from Providence.
 
Another of the highlights for the Wildcats on Saturday came from junior sprinter Olivia Allen (Kingswood, Texas) who ran the seventh-fastest indoor 400 meters in school history. She posted a time of 54.75 which is just five hundredths of a second off her outdoor and lifetime PR. It is the fastest indoor 400 meter race by a Villanova runner since January 22, 2022, when now-professional sprinter McKenna Keegan ran 54.71 in Staten Island, N.Y.
 
Allen surged into fourth place on the program's all-time indoor performance list in the 400 meters one week after she tallied the second-fastest 500 meter race (1:11.02) in school history. The versatile member of the team's sprint group now appears on the school top 10 lists in the 400 meters (No. 8), the 400 meter hurdles (No. 2) and the 500 meters (No. 2). She is also one of 12 Wildcats ever with a known 400 meter relay split below 54 seconds.