SEATTLE, Wash.—Villanova's distance medley relay quartet of sophomore Bella Walsh (Wilmington, Del.), junior Olivia Allen (Kingwood, Texas), graduate student Lizzie Martell (Essex Junction, Vt.) and junior Tilly O'Connor (Spring Lake, N.J.) etched their names into history with an eye-popping indoor school record of 10:49.98 at the Husky Classic on Friday evening. They cut more than 2.5 seconds off the mark of the 2011 national champions and posted a top eight mark in the NCAA this season. Three of the four splits from the race are the fastest ever indoors in the Wildcats record book.
 
When a school record time wins a national championship, it is a race for the ages. That was the case on March 11, 2011, when the team of Emily Lipari, Christie Verdier, Ariann Neutts and Sheila Reid raced to the NCAA title in a school record time of 10:52.52 in College Station, Texas. They beat a Villanova standard which had stood for the previous 23 years, doing so with a mark which would hold up strong for another 15 years.
 
Head coach Gina Procaccio knew before Friday's race in Washington that the school record likely needed to fall if the Wildcats were to have a chance to qualify for this year's NCAA Championships. The 12 fastest declared relay teams will qualify for the national meet which takes place in Fayetteville, Arkansas next month. There were already four marks in the NCAA this season below the now-shattered Villanova school record.
 
Enter the Wildcats newest record-breakers: Walsh, Allen, Martell and O'Connor. Their performance on Friday night was remarkably impressive, but for anyone who has followed their individual races this season their relay record was no surprise. Each of the four has recorded lifetime PRs at multiple individual distances since the start of the indoor campaign.
 
In fact, collectively they have recorded 11 individual PRs since the beginning of December. They have all impacted Villanova's all-time top 10 performance lists in their respective events: Allen in the 400 meters and the 500 meters; Martell in the 500 meters and the 800 meters; Walsh in the 1000 meters and O'Connor in the 5000 meters. They were a team destined for history, and the anatomy of their record race proved it at every turn.
 
There are two outdoor DMR teams in Wildcats history that have been faster than what the current team achieved on Friday night. The outdoor and absolute school record of 10:48.38 on April 28, 1988, set a world record at the Penn Relays and the 1990 Penn Relays champions ran 10:49.81 two years later. The world record team was anchored by two-time Olympian and College Female Athlete of the Year Vicki Huber. Villanova was fastest than the one-time world record holders in each of the first three legs of Friday's race.
 
Walsh led off with a split of 3:20.2 over the first 1200 meters. The only faster 1200 meter split in school history was four-time Olympian Sonia O'Sullivan's 3:18.7 leadoff leg at the 1990 Penn Relays. Walsh was half a second faster than Emily Lipari's leadoff of 3:20.7 at The Armory one week before the 2011 national championship race.
 
Allen got the baton for the second leg with Villanova behind the front pack of four teams. She split 52.5 for her 400 meter leg and became the fifth runner in school history – and third in the DMR -- to break 53 seconds on a 400 meter relay split. No previous Wildcats runner had come particularly close to the 53-second milestone in an indoor relay; the closest was Celeste Halliday at 53.7 in the mile relay on January 17, 1987 at the Eastman Invitational.
 
On the third leg of Friday's race, Martell was both fast and opportunistic. Fresh off an open 800 meters of 2:03.58 in Philadelphia last weekend, she split 2:01.7 and put Villanova back into the chase for the lead.
 
First, the stats. There had never been an indoor 800 meter relay split below 2:03 in school history. The only runners who had ever broken 2:02 were Patty Bradley and Debbie Grant with matching splits of 2:01.3 in 1984 and 1987, respectively.
 
Now, the grit. Halfway through Martell's leg of the relay there was the slightest of tie-ups in the lead pack ahead of her. The blink of an eye is sometimes all it takes. Martell was able to surge towards the leaders after that point and made a strong charge to give the baton to O'Connor with the Wildcats fighting for the lead against Washington, Boston College, Utah and Stanford.
 
So, O'Connor's job was two-fold. As the homestretch of the race unfurled, she was racing both the clock and the cadre of runners around her for the best possible national standing coming out of this weekend's races.
 
O'Connor was in second place during her first lap around the Dempsey Indoor oval and had to fight for her position from the first strides of the anchor leg. She would go on to post a 1600 meter split of 4:35.2 in an admirable performance; it was, after all, the first time in her collegiate career that she anchored a distance relay and just her second collegiate DMR race after running the 800 meter leg at last year's BIG EAST Championships.
 
A matter of semantics is the difference between whether Villanova owns the No. 7 or No. 8 ranked time in the NCAA this season. By raw mark, their race of 10:49.98 is seventh. On the descending order list used to select teams to the NCAA Championships, the Wildcats are eighth. A team from Oregon posted a time of 10:49.73 on Friday night at Gordon Indoor Track in Boston; that venue has a classic 220-yard oval rather than most facilities which measure 200 meters.
 
Earlier in the evening, Villanova had athletes competing in the 3000 meters and the 5000 meters. Graduate student Margaret Carroll (Mount Wolf, Pa.) powered her way to an eighth place finish in the 5K with a time of 16:09.93 and graduate student Nikki Vanasse (Martinsville, N.J.) led four Wildcats in the 3K with a time of 9:19.89.
 
Collegiate rookies Zoe Mosher (Pleasantville, N.S.), Maeve Smith (Ocean City, N.J.) and Cecilia Montagnese (Leetsdale, Pa.) all had strong 3K races. Mosher crossed the line in 9:26.22, Smith tallied a PR of 9:49.00 and Montagnese had a mark of 9:55.30.