BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—Senior triple jumper Malik Cunningham (St. Andrew, Jamaica) made history on Saturday afternoon when he made his national debut at the 2022 NCAA Division I Indoor Track & Field Championships at the Birmingham Crossplex. Cunningham is the first Villanova athlete to qualify for NCAA Championships in the triple jump since 1998 and he placed 14^th in his debut at the national meet to earn second team All-America honors.
 
Saturday's competition was the culmination of Cunningham's best collegiate season to date. He was ranked as high as 10^th in the field of competitors after jumping 15.32 meters on his first attempt of the day, then extended that distance to 15.42 meters on his second jump. Cunningham's final mark of the day was a jump of 15.31 meters on his final attempt and he wound up 14^th overall, one spot higher than he was seeded entering the meet.
 
The finish for Cunningham is the best by a Wildcats triple jumper since Jermaine Deans came in 10^th at the 1998 indoor national championships. Deans was an NCAA qualifier in both the triple jump and the long jump during his collegiate career. He and Cunningham, along with Villanova associate head coach Anthony Williams who has worked with both athletes during his time on the Main Line, come from the same high school (Jamaica College) in Jamaica.
 
Earlier this season Cunningham passed Deans for second place in school history in the triple jump with a lifetime best mark of 16.12 meters. The distance put Cunningham one centimeter ahead of Deans' top mark from his Wildcats career and behind only two-time NCAA champion Nate Cooper in the Villanova record book. Cooper is the only previous triple jumper in school history to earn All-America honors; Cunningham will become the second when those honors are officially announced next week.
 
The mark of 16.12 meters that Cunningham recorded at Clemson last month put him into a tie for 11^th place on the national performance list at the time of the competition and secured his spot at the NCAA Championships this week. In between those two competitions, Cunningham won his second career BIG EAST title in the triple jump with a winning mark of 15.43 meters at the conference meet. He successfully defended his BIG EAST indoor crown from 2020, with no conference indoor meet taking place in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
The future remains bright for Cunningham and the Wildcats jumpers. Cunningham is a two-time qualifier for the NCAA East Preliminary meet outdoors, while he and graduate Sosa Omuemu (Foxborough, Mass.) combined to be the first pair of Villanova triple jumpers to each make the awards podium at the BIG EAST Championships in the same year when Omuemu tallied a third place finish at this year's meet in Chicago, Ill. on February 26.
 
At this week's NCAA Championships the Wildcats were represented by both Cunningham and sophomore middle distance runner Sean Dolan (Pennington, N.J.) who competed in the preliminary heats of the men's 800 meters on Friday evening.