GENEVA, Ohio—Led by a third straight title in the 400 yard individual medley from junior Kelly Montesi (Greenwich, Conn.) and nearly 100 points in the 200 yard freestyle alone Villanova maintained its hold atop the team standings on the third night of the BIG EAST Championships at the SPIRE Institute. Montesi and senior Milly Routledge (North Ascot, UK) were individual champions for the Wildcats on Friday evening as the team increased its point total to 584 points with one day left in the conference meet. Villanova leads second place Connecticut (543 points) and the rest of the six-team field going into competition on Saturday.
 
Montesi pulled away to easily win the final of the 400 IM in 4:11.98 and finish more than 3.5 seconds ahead of the runner-up from Connecticut. She has now won 15 gold medals at the BIG EAST Championships during her career, including seven individual medals and eight in relays. Four of those medals have already come this week, as Montesi won the 200 yard individual medley on Thursday evening and has been a part of champion relays in the 200 yard medley relay and the 800 yard freestyle relay over the past three nights.
 
"It's just keeping warmup the same and doing pace beforehand with my coach," Montesi said of her consistency at the conference championships. "That helps a lot and we know that nothing is given and we can't take anything for granted. I think it's important to keep each other motivated and keep cheering each other on."
 
Sophomore Kaitlin Gravell (Ashton, Md.) was the bronze medalist in the 400 IM with a time of 4:21.25 and earned a medal for the second straight year. She had previously been the silver medalist as a freshman last season.
 
The highlight of the night for the Wildcats was the team's stacked lineup in the 200 free. Villanova qualified five different swimmers for the eight spots in the championship final and had another four qualifiers for the consolation final. That added up to nine individual scorers and 97 total team points in the 200 free for the Wildcats, who outscored the Huskies by a count of 97-31 in the event.
 
Routledge won her second straight gold medal in the 200 free and notched her fourth individual BIG EAST title overall. She is – like her teammate Montesi – a 15-time BIG EAST champion whose career accolades include the four individual crowns as well as being a part of 11 relay titles. Junior Nicole Welch (Beverly, Mass.) won the silver medal with a personal best time of 1:50.15. She earned her seventh career All-BIG EAST honor and beat her previous PR by two-tenths of a second.
 
"This year has been to tough on everyone here and our team too," Routledge said of the unusual season taking place in the midst of the COVID pandemic. "We have been in and out of the pool and I've had so much time off so that whole chunk of training we just didn't have. Coming here and still being able to pull that off is for me very special and it proves that I still have that somewhere in me, so that's good."
 
The other three swimmers in the championship final were freshman Lexi Elkovitch (New Albany, Ohio), junior Abbey Berloco (Cranbury, N.J.) and sophomore Brenna McLaughlin (Milford, Conn.). Elkovitch came in fifth and her time of 1:51.13 beat her previous personal best from high school by nearly two full seconds. Berloco finished sixth in 1:51.34 and McLaughlin was seventh with a personal best time of 1:52.32. In the consolation final, senior Emily Provenzo (Glen Allen, Va.) came in 10^th (1:51.96) and was followed by freshman Molly Benson (Kensington, Md.) in 11^th place (1:52.10), senior Andrea Fong (Moorestown, N.J.) in 13^th place (1:53.39) and junior Grace Wielar (Richmond, Va.) in 14^th place with a time of 1:53.65.
 
Sophomore Margaret Kleinsmith (Mount Kisco, N.Y.) was the silver medalist in the 100 yard breaststroke with a personal best time of 1:02.04. She beat her previous PR from high school and touched the wall over a second faster than her time last season (1:03.11) when she was the conference champion in the 100 breast. Senior Rayann Jaryszak (Arlington, Texas) finished fourth in Friday night's final with a time of 1:03.02 and sophomore Perri Stahl (La Grange, Ill.) came in fifth with a PR of 1:04.12.
 
The final individual swimming event of the night was the 100 yard backstroke in which freshman Audrey Pastorek (Savannah, Ga.) led four Villanova swimmers with a fourth place finish and a time of 55.78. Freshman Hannah Wasmuth (Peachtree Corners, Ga.) led three Wildcats in the consolation final with a 12^th place finish and a time of 57.37. Wielar came in 14^th (57.41) and senior Anastasia Kontrimas (Sugar Land, Texas) was 15^th (57.97).
 
Friday night concluded with the 400 yard medley relay in which Villanova came in second with a time of 3:42.42. Pastorek led off the relay with a split of 56.32 on the backstroke leg, followed by Kleinsmith in 1:01.44 in the breaststroke, Montesi with a split of 54.57 on the butterfly leg and Berloco anchoring the race with a split of 50.09 in the freestyle.
 
Competition on Saturday begins with preliminaries at 10 a.m. and the finals session at 6 p.m.. On the event schedule for the final day of the meet are the 1650 yard freestyle, the 200 yard backstroke, the 100 yard freestyle, the 200 yard breaststroke, the 200 yard butterfly, women's three-meter diving and the 400 yard freestyle relay.