CHICAGO, Ill.—Sophomore middle distance runner Sean Dolan (Pennington, N.J.) smashed an indoor school record in the 800 meters which had stood for 40 years and put himself into NCAA contention to highlight the second and final day of competition in the indoor 2022 BIG EAST Track & Field Championships Presented by JEEP on Saturday afternoon. Dolan won the gold medal in the 800 meters with a time of 1:47.53 inside the Track & Field Center at Gately Park where Villanova finished third in the men's team standings with 96 points this weekend.
 
Dolan and senior triple jumper Malik Cunningham (St. Andrew, Jamaica) won gold medals on Saturday and the Wildcats earned eight medals in all during the indoor conference championships which returned this weekend after a nearly two-year absence. Saturday's action featured silver medal performances in the 3000 meters and the 4x800 meter relay to go along with bronze medals in the triple jump and the shot put. Villanova has finished in the top three of the team standings 21 times at the indoor BIG EAST meet.
 
The performance which captivated athletes, coaches and spectators alike on Saturday was Dolan's historic run in the final of the 800 meters. He beat the previous BIG EAST Championships meet record of 1:47.59 set by Joseph White of Georgetown six years ago and also eclipsed the Wildcats previous indoor standard of 1:47.84 which John Marshall set on February 12, 1982 in the Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden. Dolan already held the second-fastest indoor 800 meters in the Villanova record book with a time of 1:48.11 that he recorded earlier this year.
 
Postseason implications loomed large with Dolan's race, as he soared to 14^th place on this year's NCAA Division I Indoor Qualifying List in the 800 meters. The top 16 declared athletes in each individual event will be selected for the NCAA Championships next month, and Dolan entered the weekend just outside the top-16 in both the 800 meters and the Mile despite posting sensational times of 1:48.11 and 3:56.39 in those events during the season. He was a first team All-American in the Mile as a redshirt freshman last year.
 
The hardest part of Dolan's effort on Saturday may have been holding on at the finish line to secure the gold medal. He led the race wire-to-wire but had to pound down the final straightaway to hold off challenger Matthew Payamps from Georgetown, a fellow sub-four miler who ranks 10^th nationally in the Mile this season. Dolan crossed the finish line a quarter of a second ahead of Payamps in the 800 meters on Saturday, with the rest of the field well behind them.
 
"It was good," Dolan said of how the race went. "I wanted to control it from the front. Now that I look back it was a hard second half of it and then it just kind of went to plan. I had great guys behind me the whole way. It was a fun race in a good environment. I am lucky to have had such a great support group behind me since I was a really young age. From my coaches and teammates to my parents, high school coaches and high school teammates, they push me every day to achieve my goals, realize nothing is impossible and do the things I love to do."
 
Saturday was a historic day in more ways than one as the Wildcats placed two athletes on the awards podium in men's triple jump for the first time ever, indoors or outdoors. Cunningham was the gold medalist with a winning mark of 15.43 meters and graduate Sosa Omuemo (Foxborough, Mass.) finished third with a jump of 14.01 meters. It is the second career BIG EAST title for Cunningham, who successfully defended his 2020 indoor title in a field of seven athletes. Omuemu is a graduate transfer from Merrimack on the Villanova roster this season and earned his first collegiate all-conference accolade with the third place finish.
 
Cunningham is currently in a three-way tie for 14^th place nationally in the triple jump after posting a lifetime best mark of 16.12 meters at the Tiger Paw Invitational earlier this month. At the BIG EAST meet on Saturday he recorded the eventual winning mark of 15.43 meters on his second of six jumps on the day. That gave him a lead which was never seriously threatened the rest of the way. Omuemu's best jump on Saturday came on his first attempt when he cleared 14 meters for the first time this season. He was just 11 centimeters off his career PR of 14.12 meters set during the 2021 outdoor season.
 
The other medalists for the Wildcats on Saturday came in the 3000 meters, the 4x800 meter relay and the shot put. Junior Haftu Strintzos (Melbourne, Australia) ran his second great race in as many days and finished second in the 3000 meters with a personal best time of 7:56.07. He was a two-time medalist this weekend and previously came in third in the 5000 meters on Friday afternoon. Strintzos, senior Josh Phillips (Belrose, Australia) and redshirt freshman Jack Jennings (Mendham, N.J.) were scorers in the 3000 meters. Phillips came in fifth with a time of 7:59.26 and Jennings placed seventh with a personal best time of 8:03.72.
 
Graduate thrower Riley LaRiviere (Telford, Pa.) finished third in the shot put with a throw of 14.93 meters to close a great weekend of competition. LaRiviere was fifth in the weight throw on Friday and then came back Saturday with a big finish in the shot put to earn a spot on the awards podium. He was in sixth place after two throws and fourth place when the field of nine athletes completed their initial opening round of three attempts each. When the competition moved on to the final round and three more throws LaRiviere extended his best mark of the day to 14.93 meters on his fourth throw to move up to third place and medal contention.
 
A lineup of redshirt freshman Liam Murphy (Millstone, N.J.), senior Charlie O'Donovan (Cork, Ireland), junior Miller Anderson (West Hartford, Conn.) and Dolan came in second in the 4x800 relay with a time of 7:26.13. Dolan still had energy in the tank after his individual 800 meters earlier in the day and had a split of 1:50.57 on the anchor leg as Villanova held off third place and hometown favorite DePaul (7:26.46) by a third of a second at the finish line.
 
Earlier in the afternoon O'Donovan and Murphy each scored in the final of the Mile. O'Donovan placed fourth in 3:59.10 – his sub-four times are becoming commonplace these days – and Murphy was sixth with a time of 4:09.30. Senior Patrick Spychalski (Mount Pleasant, S.C.) also scored in the Mile, finishing eighth in the final with a time of 4:15.74. No runners had ever broken four minutes in the Mile during the 41-year history of the indoor BIG EAST Championships; the top four finishers all did so in Saturday's final to erase the standing meet record of 4:00.12 which had been held by Kurt Benninger since 2008.
 
The meet concluded with the 4x400 meter relay in which a lineup of sophomore Jakob Kunzer (George Town, Grand Cayman), junior Mac Costonis (Lower Gwynedd, Pa.), sophomore Nicholas Mollica (Jackson, N.J.) and graduate Jacob Bonanotte (Barrington, Ill.) finished fifth with a time of 3:18.09.