CARY, N.C.—In his first official competition in just over a year, sophomore Haftu Strintzos (Victoria, Australia) made a charge up the hill in the final 1000 meters and won his first career individual BIG EAST title at WakeMed Soccer Park Field on Friday morning. Villanova finished third in a close team race at the BIG EAST Cross Country Championships Presented by Jeep, which was the first conference championship of the 2020-21 academic year due to the COVID pandemic. Strintzos was one of six Wildcats who placed among the top 20 finishers and earned All-BIG EAST honors.
 
"I am quite amazed," Strintzos said after the race in an interview during live coverage of the BIG EAST meet. "This is my first BIG EAST title and it is quite surreal."
 
Strintzos covered the 8000-meter men's course in 23:05.2 to come in ahead of runner-up Barry Keane of Butler (23:06.0) by less than a second. Although there are portions of the course which are run on flat ground, the race begins with an 800 meter downhill portion and requires the runners to make two passes up a long uphill approach to the finish line. Keane was running two seconds in front of the chase pack midway through the race and still held a slim lead over Strintzos with 1500 meters left before the Wildcats sophomore on the rise made a decisive move to the front.
 
"I didn't know how the course was going to be until we checked it out yesterday," Strintzos said. "I had to be smart about it, especially going that first 800 meters downhill. I wanted to be conservative like [Coach O'Sullivan] said. It hurt quite a bit coming up the hill and I was trying to decide whether to close the gap earlier or not. I had to time it right. Marcus was telling me the whole time to be patient, and then I closed hard."
 
The field of 94 runners stayed tightly packed through most of the first half of the race before starting to bunch out, but Strintzos had company nearby him in junior Josh Phillips (Belrose, Australia) who wound up finishing seventh in 23:30.3. The rest of the scoring runners for Villanova included senior Nick Steele (Harvard, Mass.) in 14^th place (23:39.5), junior Charlie O'Donovan (Dublin, Ireland) right behind him in 15^th place (23:40.2) and senior Paul Nichols (Latham, N.Y.) in 17^th place (23:43.1).
 
"Josh was right beside me from the start," Strintzos said. "I love running shoulder-to-shoulder with teammates during a race because it gives you great motivation."
 
Junior Jack Fredian (Arlington Heights, Ill.) also finished in the top-20 for the Wildcats, placing 18^th in 23:44.8 to give Villanova six all-conference performers. This is the sixth time in the 41-year history of the BIG EAST Championships and the first time since 2014 that the Wildcats earned six All-BIG EAST accolades. It is also the third year in a row that Villanova has placed all five of its scoring runners among the top 20 finishers overall at the conference meet.
 
There was a spread of just 19 points between the top three teams when the final team scores were counted after the race. Butler won the team title with 35 points, followed by Georgetown (52) and Villanova (54) in the field of 10 conference teams. The depth of BIG EAST cross country, traditionally one of the conference's top sports, was on full display with the three teams in front. Each of the 10 runners in the Wildcats lineup finished among the top 38 in the field.
 
Graduate transfer Justin Weber (South Milwaukee, Wis.) came in 24^th with a time of 24:01.7 and was followed by sophomore Patrick Spychalski (Mount Pleasant, S.C.) in 34^th place (24:26.8), while the Villanova lineup was rounded out by junior Ben Seiple (Westport, Conn.) and freshman Liam Murphy (Millstone, N.J.) who crossed the finish line consecutively in 37^th place (24:39.8) and 38^th place (24:43.9).