CHICAGO, Ill.—Gold medals in shot put and high jump highlighted a total of eight podium performances and a third place team finish for Villanova at the 2026 BIG EAST Indoor Track and Field Championships presented by JEEP on Saturday afternoon. Graduate student Maria Deaviz (Souderton, Pa.) made her first BIG EAST Championships a memorable one with a dominant performance en route to the shot put title. Junior Malaika Cunningham (St. Andrew, Jamaica) won her second career gold medal in the high jump and her first indoors to go along with her outdoor conference title last year.
 
This is the second time in the last three years and the 29^th time overall that the Wildcats have posted a top three team finish at the indoor conference championships. Villanova totaled 115 points over two days of competition at Dr. Conrad Worrill Track and Field Center at Gately Park while scoring in 12 different events and tallying podium finishes in nine of them. Both days of the meet saw the Wildcats win two gold medals, with Deaviz and Cunningham on Saturday preceded by 5000 meter champion Sadie Sigfstead (Edmonton, Alta.) and the gold medal distance medley relay team on Friday evening.
 
Deaviz was the Wildcats first athlete to compete on Saturday morning and it took just one throw for her to secure her eventual first BIG EAST gold medal. Her distance of 16.70 meters makes her Villanova's third indoor shot put champion after Connie Sweet (1985) and Sade Meeks (2022). Deaviz had a winning margin of more than two meters over the runner-up from St. John's and the rest of the field of 14 competitors. She now owns the seven longest throws in shot put in school history.
 
Cunningham was the last of the 15 competitors in the high jump to get underway, passing until the bar was raised to 1.65 meters at which point eight of the 15 entries had already been eliminated. After a clearance on her first jump of the day, Cunningham needed two jumps at 1.70 meters while the duo of Connecticut's Kaylee Meyer and DePaul's Eveline Reno each made it over the bar on their first try. Cunningham answered with a successful attempt at 1.73 meters on her second jump, while Mayer, Reno and Maresa Hense were all eliminated at that height.
 
Villanova made the podium in all three relays for the first time since 2018 and the 10^th time in the 43-year history of the indoor conference championships. In the final two events contested on Saturday afternoon, the 4x800 meter relay and 4x400 meter relay teams each earned bronze medals. Two more podium opportunities came from the 3000 meters where the Wildcats combined on a 2-3-4-5 finish which included a silver medal for junior Tilly O'Connor (Spring Lake, N.J.) and bronze for sophomore Rosie Shay (Middletown, N.J.).
 
Less than two seconds separated the quartet of Wildcats in the 3000 meters. O'Connor finished second in 9:06.55 and Shay trimmed more than six seconds off her PR to come in third in 9:07.18. Sigfstead finished fourth with a time of 9:07.76 and graduate student Margaret Carroll (Mount Wolf, Pa.) was fifth in 9:08.51. Sigfstead and Carroll went 1-2 in the 5K on Friday evening and were among five athletes in the meet to do the 5K/3K double. The duo combined for 27 points in the two events.
 
Junior sprinter Olivia Allen (Kingwood, Texas) was the runner-up in the 400 meters and combined with freshman Kate Borton (Auckland, New Zealand), senior Micah Trusty (Philadelphia, Pa.) and junior Therese Trainer (Havertown, Pa.) for a third place finish in the 4x400 relay. Trusty and Trainer ran the middle two legs of the distance medley relay on Friday night for their first medals of the weekend.
 
The effort by Allen was duplicated by graduate student Nikki Vanasse (Martinsville, Ohio) who was the silver medalist in the mile and ran the second leg of the 4x800 meter relay. The lineup of freshman Sophia McInnes (Bayport, N.Y.), Vanasse, junior Caelen O'Leary (Taunton, Mass.) and sophomore Bella Walsh (Wilmington, Del.) came in third with a time of 8:42.78. Walsh pulled away from Georgetown in the closing leg of the race and Villanova finished third by a margin of nearly 6.5 seconds.
 
Vanasse closed strong in the mile to post a season best time of 4:36.77 and win her first individual BIG EAST track medal. She was in fifth place with 400 meters to go but passed three runners on the penultimate lap and held off the third place challenger from Providence by nearly three seconds at the finish line. Walsh came in fifth in the race in 4:41.79. Later in the afternoon, O'Leary trimmed 3.5 seconds off her lifetime PR in the 800 meters and surged to a fifth place finish in 2:08.75. McInnes added a seventh place finish with a time of 2:09.61.
 
Connecticut finished first in the team race with 169 points, followed by DePaul with 133 points and Villanova with 115. The rest of the team scores included St. John's (110), Georgetown (56), Providence (54), Butler (26), Marquette (23), Xavier (9) and Creighton (4).