EUGENE, Ore.—Sophomore middle distance runner Sean Dolan (Pennington, N.J.) automatically qualified for the final of the 800 meters and senior distance runner Haftu Strintzo (Melbourne, Australia) recorded the seventh-fastest time in school history in the 10000 meters on the first evening of competition at the 2022 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships. Dolan came in second in his heat of the 800 meters at Hayward Field and Strintzos later tallied a 19^th place finish in the 10K championship race.
 
First up for Villanova on Wednesday night was the semifinal round of the 800 meters. Dolan posted a time of 1:46.96 in the second of three heats and is the fifth-fastest qualifier for Friday night's final. The top two finishers in each heat and the next three fastest times advanced from the field of 24 athletes who started in the semifinals. Dolan ran a strong race from start to finish and came in second in his heat to nab one of the automatic qualifying spots.
 
The entire race saw Dolan run toe-to-toe with Moad Zahafi from Texas Tech who entered the NCAA Championships as the fastest qualifier coming out of the East and West preliminary meets two weeks ago. Following a tight first lap in which four of the eight runners went out in under 53 seconds, Zahafi and Dolan gained a bit of separation from the rest of the pack as they came down the final straightaway. Zahafi crossed the finish line in 1:46.66 and Dolan was three-tenths of a second behind him, with the third place finisher another half a second off of Dolan's pace. That third place finish, Dayton Carlson of Arizona State, ended up as the final on-time qualifier for the final by a margin of four-thousandths of a second over a runner from the first heat.
 
Dolan is the Wildcats first men's runner to make an NCAA final in the 800 meters since Samuel Ellison did so twice during his collegiate career. Ellison made the final of the 800 meters outdoors as a sophomore in 2012 and indoors as a senior two years later. Dolan's semifinal time of 1:46.96 is the fastest he has run this season and the second-fastest time of his career. His only previous race below 1:47 came on June 12, 2021 when he posted a personal best mark of 1:46.41 at the USATF New York Open & Masters Outdoor Championships; the performance earned him a spot at last year's U.S. Olympic Team Trials which were also contested at Hayward Field.
 
The final individual event on Wednesday night was the championship race in the 10000 meters. Strintzos made his second straight appearance in the race after competing at the outdoor NCAA Championships for the first time in his career last season. He recorded a time of 28:47.35 in Wednesday's race and placed 19^th overall in a performance which will earn him honorable mention All-America honors when those accolades are officially announced next week. Strintzos recorded the third-fastest time of his career and finished nearly four full seconds than the time he ran at the NCAA Championships last season. Wednesday's time is the fastest 10K race that a Villanovan has ever run at the NCAA meet.
 
More than half of the race unfolded with a tight chase pack running well behind Athanas Kioko from Campbell who surged to a big lead from the start and remained the frontrunner for the first 18 laps out of 25 total. Strintzos positioned himself well in the middle of the pack running behind Kioko over the first 6000 meters. It was around the 8000 meter mark that the pace started to pick up, with Patrick Kiprop from Arkansas eventually being the first one to catch Kioko and then several others following as a lead group emerged ahead of the rest of the field of runners.
 
Strintzos now owns six of the 12 fastest times in school history in the 10000 meters, with three of those times coming this season alone. He recorded a personal best mark of 28:34.41 at the Virginia Challenge in April and qualified for the NCAA Championships with a time of 28:42.13 at the NCAA East Preliminary last month. Strintzos and Donal Walsh, who ran 28:53.5 in a third place NCAA finish in 1972, are the only two Wildcats who have ever broken 29 minutes at the NCAA Championships.
 
Action continues in Eugene on Thursday evening when the Villanova women get underway with graduate middle distance runner McKenna Keegan (West Grove, Pa.) competing in the semifinal round of the 800 meters at 10:14 p.m. Eastern time. The next race for Dolan is at the same time on Friday night when the championship race in the men's 800 meters is contested.