RALEIGH, N.C.—In summer-like heat on the second day of the Raleigh Relays, the Villanova women's distance runners matched the weather with sizzling times in the 1500 meters and the 5000 meters. Highlighting the performances on Friday night at Paul Derr Track were sophomore Rosie Shay (Middletown, N.J.) running the Wildcats fastest 1500 meters in seven years and junior Tilly O'Connor (Spring Lake, N.J.) posting the seventh-fastest 5K race ever by a Villanovan.
 
It was not until after 10 p.m. that O'Connor got onto the track following a weather delay of more than an hour. She ran in the fastest heat of the 5K and was about 30 minutes from the start of her race when the weather delay was called. The pause in the action did nothing to stop her from running one of the best races of her career.
 
O'Connor posted a time of 15:42.69 which puts her into fifth place on the program's all-time performance list. Her mark is the seventh-fastest 5K race ever for a Wildcats runner during their collegiate years and the program's fourth-fastest outdoor race to occur during the NCAA season. O'Connor picked up steam as the race went on and she passed three runners during the final lap to finish fourth in a section that included both collegiate and professional runners.
 
Earlier in the evening, freshman distance runner Zoe Mosher (Pleasantville, N.S.) recorded a personal best time of 16:35.08 in the 5K. She crossed the finish line exactly 23 seconds faster than the previous PR she had recorded just a month earlier at the indoor BIG EAST Championships in Chicago, Ill. Mosher has now registered PRs in the 1500 meters and the 5000 meters in a span of seven days in the first two outdoor meets of her collegiate career.
 
Shay led an impressive performance by Villanova in the 1500 meters and ran the team's fastest time in the event since 2019. She finished in 4:14.19 to move into ninth place on the Wildcats all-time performance list, and she also becomes only the second Villanova runner in the last nine years to impact the program's top 10 in this event. Shay cut more than four full seconds off her previous top time which was recorded at Princeton last outdoor season.
 
Sophomore Bella Walsh (Wilmington, Del.) also lowered her PR in the 1500 meters to a time of 4:15.62 in the same heat as Shay competed in. Her previous personal best had come exactly a year ago at this same meet and she trimmed more than four seconds off the previous time. Graduate student Nikki Vanasse (Martinsville, N.J.) finished with a time of 4:19.49 in Friday's race and freshman Sophia McInnes (Bayport, N.Y.) crossed the line in 4:25.34, better than three seconds faster than her season-opening time at Penn last week.
 
Villanova wraps up three days of competition at the Raleigh Relays with the 800 meters on Saturday afternoon. An additional contingent of runners from the team will compete locally in the Danny Curran Invitational at Widener.