SEATTLE, Wash.—The records started coming and they didn't stop coming, and the Villanova women's track & field all-stars got their game on to the tune of three school records and two more top 10 performances in school history during the Husky Classic at Dempsey Indoor this weekend. The middle two legs from Friday night's record-breaking distance medley relay – junior Olivia Allen (Kingwood, Texas) and graduate student Lizzie Martell (Essex Junction, Vt.) – smashed the indoor school records in the 400 meters and the 800 meters on Saturday afternoon.
 
And that wasn't all. The duo of sophomore Rosie Shay (Middletown, N.J.) and junior Tilly O'Connor (Spring Lake, N.J.) posted top 10 times in the program record book in the mile and the 3000 meters while taking over the BIG EAST lead this season in their respective events. They each recorded the fastest races in those events by a Wildcats runner in the past seven years to cap off one of the most memorable weekends of the last several years for the Villanova distance group.
 
It started with the first event of the day when Allen ran the open 400 meters and cruised into the record books with a winning time of 53.69. She is the Wildcats first athlete ever to break 54 seconds indoors in the 400 meters and the first to do so at any venue since the 2022 outdoor collegiate season. Allen ousted the Villanova indoor standard which had stood for just over 37 years, a mark of 54.11 which was recorded by Michelle Bennett at the Kodak Invitational in Johnson City, Tenn., on January 28, 1989. Saturday's race came just hours after Allen split 52.5 on the 400 meter leg of the distance medley relay.
 
Later in the afternoon, the final individual race of the weekend was the invite section of the 800 meters. Martell had just recently lowered her lifetime PR in the 800 meters to 2:03.58 in Philadelphia last week, but she split 2:01.7 on the 800 meter leg of the DMR on Friday night and had already impacted the Wildcats all-time top 10 lists in the 800 and the 500 meters already this season. The result for Martell on Saturday was an open race in which she matched her exact split from less than 24 hours earlier. She crossed the line in 2:01.70 for a new indoor school record and the second-fastest time that a Villanova athlete has ever posted in the 800 meters in a collegiate competition.
 
Martell broke the Wildcats previous indoor mark of 2:02.46 which was set by Siofra Cleirigh Buttner in a runner-up performance at the NCAA Championships on March 10, 2018. Cleirigh Buttner and McKenna Keegan owned eight of the nine fastest indoor times by Villanovans until last week, but Martell has now broken onto the list twice in a span of eight days. Keegan is the Wildcats only runner ever with a faster time during a collegiate race: 2:01.25 at the NCAA East Preliminary during the 2021 outdoor season.
 
Records speak loudly in a program which has a pedigree and tradition that is anywhere near that of Villanova women's track & field. The bigger implication of Martell's record, however, is what her mark means on the national scene.  She was as high as eighth place on the Division I descending order list when she crossed the finish line and is likely to sit in 11^th place on the list at the close of competition around the country this weekend. The declared athletes with the 16 fastest times this season will be selected to compete at the NCAA Championships in Fayetteville, Ark., next month.
 
Shay was another Wildcats headliner on Saturday as she dashed to a first place finish out of 80 runners in the mile in one of the signature performances of her collegiate career to date. Her time of 4:35.31 is the fastest mile race by a Villanova athlete in just over seven years and trimmed more than three full seconds off the previous PR of 4:38.78 she achieved less than a month ago at the Quaker Invitational in Philadelphia. Shay is the first addition since 2019 to the Wildcats top 10 performance list in the mile.
 
The time of 4:35.31 puts Shay eighth in school history in the mile and gives her this year's lead atop the BIG EAST performance list. The latter note is no small feat, not when she had to pass teammates Bella Walsh (Wilmington, Del.) and O'Connor who are now second and third on that list. Villanova has five of the top eight performers in the BIG EAST this season.
 
Graduate student Nikki Vanasse (Martinsville, N.J.) posted a season-best time of 4:41.52 to move into eighth place on the BIG EAST list. She was followed by a trio of Wildcats freshmen who all had strong races of their own in earlier heats of the mile. Zoe Mosher (Pleasantville, N.S.) posted a time of 4:50.02 and came in just ahead of Sophia McInnes (Bayport, N.Y.) with a time of 4:50.16. Classmate Cecilia Montagnese (Leetsdale, Pa.) recorded a personal best time of 4:56.53.
 
The invite section of the 3000 meters saw O'Connor post one of the fastest times in Villanova history in this event, just as she had done earlier in the season in the 5000 meters. O'Connor posted a mark of 9:01.27 in Seattle and notched the eighth-fastest indoor 3K race in the program record book. She rises to sixth overall and fifth indoors on the school's all-time performance list.
 
This year's BIG EAST descending order list in the 3000 meters is even more awash with Wildcats than the mile list which Shay headlines. O'Connor took over the conference lead with Saturday's race and ran 12 seconds faster than Vanasse who has a mark of 9:13.28 from Boston at the start of the indoor campaign. The top five athletes on the BIG EAST list are all Villanova runners; O'Connor and Vanasse are followed by Shay (9:13.45), graduate student Margaret Carroll (Mount Wolf, Pa.) at 9:14.66, and by Mosher with a time of 9:18.12.