UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.—Junior distance runner Liam Murphy (Millstone, N.J.) set a facility record to headline three sub-four minute miles by Villanova in competition at Penn State on Friday evening. Murphy ran a blistering 3:55.58 in the mile to shatter by more than a second the mark of 3:56.51 which had stood as the record at Horace Ashenfelter III Indoor Track for 11 years. Graduate student Charlie O'Donovan (Cork, Ireland) and junior Sean Dolan (Pennington, N.J.) also broke four minutes in the same heat of the mile that Murphy competed in. All three runners were already part of the Wildcats vaunted club of sub-four milers which numbers 44 athletes in total.
 
Among the other highlights from the first of two days of competition at the Penn State National Open was freshman Amiri Prescod (Chiguanas, Trinidad and Tobago) tying the seventh-fastest time in school history in the 60 meters with a personal best mark of 6.80. He advanced through the preliminary and semifinal heats of the 60 meters, and is scheduled to return to the track for the 200 meters on Saturday afternoon.
 
Murphy finished the night as the NCAA leader in the mile this season while O'Donovan (3:56.08) and Dolan (3:57.45) were ranked third and 11^th, respectively. The times by Murphy and O'Donovan are the third- and fourth-fastest indoor times in school history, putting both runners just ahead of Dolan's personal best time of 3:56.39 set last season in Nashville and which now ranks fifth on the program's indoor list.
 
Friday's performances occurred nearly one year to the day that the trio of Murphy, O'Donovan and Dolan each ran sub-four minute miles in the same building at last year's Sykes & Sabock Challenge. In that meet on January 29, 2022 the order of finish was O'Donovan (3:57.46), Dolan (3:57.59) and Murphy (3:59.63). That night marked the first career sub-four time for Murphy, who is the 44^th and most recent member of the Villanova sub-four minute club. He sliced more than four seconds off the mark with his pace of 3:55.58 on Friday night. The time is the 13^th-fastest ever run by a Villanovan during their collegiate careers, regardless of venue (indoor/outdoor) or season (collegiate/summer).
 
Prescod has quickly made a name for himself just three meets into his collegiate career. A walk-on to the team this season, he now sits prominently on the Wildcats all-time leaderboard in the 60 meters. Prescod's mark of 6.88 on Friday night is tied with Kevin Okolie (2007, 2008) and Sterling Pierce (2018) for the seventh-fastest in school history. He is tied with Pierce for fourth overall in Villanova history. Prescod had previously been sixth on the Wildcats performance list in the 60 meters after he posted a time of 6.93 in his collegiate debut in Staten Island just 13 days earlier.
 
That mark was already surpassed during the preliminary heats of the 60 meters on Friday when Prescod crossed the finish line in 6.91 and ranked seventh out of 21 competitors in the first of three potential races on the day. He came back to lower his time to 6.88 and place sixth out of 16 runners in the semifinal heats. Prescod qualified for the final but elected not tor run a third race in a span of less than three hours. He is slated for the unseeded section of the 200 meters at 12:15 p.m. on Saturday afternoon.
 
After an opening heat of the mile which featured an entire section consisting of sub-four milers, graduate student Evan Addison (Collegeville, Pa.) and senior Miller Anderson (West Hartford, Conn.) ran in the successive heats. Addison recorded a time of 4:04.22 in the second heat which featured a group that was on pace for a sub-four time until there were less than two laps remaining. Anderson set his second PR of the season with a time of 4:08.15. He cut nearly 3.6 seconds off the mark of 4:11.73 he recorded at the Penn 10-Team Select in the season opener earlier this month.
 
Later in the evening, junior Chris Weeks (Virginia Beach, Va.) recorded a time of 1:57.96 and the junior duo of Cole Walker (Chadds Ford, Pa.) and Ben Seiple (Westport, Conn.) ran the 5000 meters. Walker was competing in the 5K for the first time in his collegiate career and recorded a time of 14:27.47. Seiple posted a mark of 14:43.89.
 
The lone field event on the Villanova schedule was the weight throw in which sophomore Tristan Bolinsky (Gordon, Pa.) extended his personal best mark to 15.55 meters in his third competition of the year. Bolinsky moved up two spots from 10^th to eighth on the Wildcats all-time performance list in the weight throw.
 
Saturday will be a full day of action for Villanova on the final day of the Penn State National Open. First up on the team's event schedule Saturday is the shot put at 11 a.m., while the final event of the competition is the 4x400 meter relay at 4:25 p.m.