EUGENE, Ore.—Sophomore middle distance runner Sean Dolan (Pennington, N.J.) is steadily building his career one milestone at a time. This season he qualified for the outdoor NCAA Championships for the first time and was an automatic qualifier for the national championship race with a strong showing in the semifinal round. His next step came on Friday night in the final at Hayward Field when he lowered his lifetime PR and finished in fifth place with a time of 1:46.38 at the 2022 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships. It is the highest finish by a Villanova runner in the 800 meters in 29 years.
 
The field for Friday's final was a particularly strong one and Dolan finished with a time of 1:46.38, crossing the line .03 seconds ahead of his previous PR which had been set almost exactly one year ago on June 12, 2021. The race went out in just under 51 seconds with Dolan a few strides off the pace at the bell. His official splits were 51.49 on his opening lap and 54.89 on the second lap. The fifth place finish is the highest career NCAA result for Dolan, who previously came in sixth indoors in the Mile as a redshirt freshman last year.
 
"It was good," Dolan said of his fifth place finish. "Half the battle is making the meet and then obviously coming out to perform. I am very happy with being able to come out and perform this year compared to last year not being able to make it at all [to outdoor NCAAs]. I am definitely happy with that and I was able to squeak a little PR out of the final today which was good."
 
Dolan will earn first team All-America honors in the 800 meters when those accolades are officially released early next week. It is his third career All-America honor behind a first team performance in the Mile indoors in 2021 and a second team All-America honor in the 800 meters indoor earlier this year. The last Villanova runner to post a top-five NCAA finish in the 800 meters since Brad Sumner came in fourth outdoors in consecutive years in 1992 and 1993.
 
A talented field and a fast, physical race – five of the nine runners recorded PRs in the final – led to a fair amount of jostling for position coming out of the final turn in the opening lap and again during the second time around the track. Dolan was bumped on a couple of those occasions but was able to establish position for himself down the stretch and close the race strong. The top three finishers all ran 1:45.09 or faster, while the fourth place runner was just four-hundredths of a second ahead of Dolan at the line.
 
"I think I am in a bit better shape than 1:46 but we'll take it as it goes," Dolan said. "That's just racing [the physical nature of the race]. You are never going to get a perfect go and if you you're probably out there on your own. I just took it as it came and tried to be smart. You maybe waste a little bit of energy trying to get around people but that's just how it goes."
 
Dolan's finish scored four team points for the Wildcats at the national meet, making this the 58^th time in the last 76 years that Villanova scored at the outdoor NCAA Championships. It is the 48^th time out of those 58 years that the Wildcats have tallied four or more points at the meet. Villanova was represented at the NCAA Championships this week by Dolan and senior Haftu Strintzos (Melbourne, Australia) who recorded the fastest time in the 10,000 meters (28:47.35) that any Wildcats runner has recorded at an NCAA Championships meet.
 
Although this week marked Dolan's debut at the outdoor NCAA Championships, it was not his first time competing at Hayward Field. He came to Oregon last summer for the U.S. Olympic Team Trials and advanced to the semifinal round of the 800 meters. Building off his NCAA finish, Dolan will be back at Hayward Field in just two weeks for the 2022 Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships which take place from June 23-26.
 
"We'll have USAs back here in a couple of weeks so I'll be focused for that," Dolan said. "It is good to get used to rounds again and running fast rounds. I put together two 1:46's and two of my three fastest times ever in a 48-hour span [this week] so that's always good confidence going in. It is just more practice and the rounds are a little faster now. The goal is to progress through those rounds, make the final at USAs and give myself a shot at running fast and be a top three [finisher]."
 
Still to come for Villanova at the NCAA Championships is women's competition in the high jump and the 800 meters on Saturday afternoon. Senior Sanaä Barnes (Keller, Texas) gets underway in the high jump at 5 p.m. Eastern time (2 p.m. Pacific time) and graduate middle distance runner McKenna Keegan (West Grove, Pa.) runs in the championship of the 800 meters at 6:44 p.m. Eastern.