UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.—In just the second track event of her young collegiate career freshman Micah Trusty (Philadelphia, Pa.) set a school record in the 600 meters with a time of 1:30.47 at the Penn State National Open on Saturday afternoon. Trusty eclipsed the previous Villanova standard of 1:31.55 which had been held by Siofra Cleirigh Buttner since January 23, 2015. The record performance highlighted another strong day of action for the Wildcats at Horace Ashenfelter III Indoor Track as the two-day Penn State meet wrapped up.
 
Seven of the 10 fastest times in school history in the 600 meters have been recorded in the last nine seasons and Trusty becomes the second straight freshman to be the school record holder. Cleirigh Buttner was also in her first year of collegiate competition in 2015 when she ran 1:31.55 in the Metro Team Challenge at The Armory in New York. It stood up until Trusty toed the line for the invitational section of the event on Saturday afternoon and beat the mark by just over a second. She opened with a lap of 27.44 for the first 200 meters and then had successive laps of 30.08 and 32.96 to close.
 
It was a busy day for Trusty, who returned to the track approximately 90 minutes after her record performance to run the second leg of the 4x400 meter relay. She had a split of 55.81 on her leg of the race as a lineup of freshman Myonica Jackson (Bolingbrook, Ill.), Trusty, sophomore Maya Dorer (New York, N.Y.) and senior Madison Martinez (Gahanna, Ohio) posted a time of 3:48.62. Martinez had the fastest split of the quartet with an anchor leg of 55.27 to power Villanova to a first place finish in its heat. Jackson opened the relay with a split of 59.81 on the opening leg and Dorer had a split of 57.74 on the third leg.
 
Earlier in the afternoon Jackson recorded a personal best time of 25.38 in the 200 meters, breaking her previous mark set in high school. Two other individual races also featured personal best times during the day. Senior Anna Helwigh (Soborg, Denmark) recorded a time of 2:49.21 in the 1000 meters to lower her PR by more than 1.6 seconds. Graduate student Ariana Gardizy (Lansdale, Pa.) lowered a two-year-old personal best in the 3000 meters with a time of 9:34.72 in the Wildcats final individual event of the day.
 
Graduate student Liv Morgan (Bronx, N.Y.) recorded a personal best mark in the shot put with a throw of 12.49 meters. Her previous top mark of 12.22 meters had been set during the Dr. Sander Invitational/Columbia Challenge in 2020. Villanova fared well in Saturday's field events, as junior Roschell Clayton (Montego Bay, Jamaica) was the runner-up in the invitational high jump with a height of 1.71 meters and graduate student Ashley Preston (Franklinville, N.J.) cleared 3.70 meters in the pole vault.
 
Villanova returns to action next week when several members of the team will compete in the Bruce Lehane Scarlet & White Invite in Boston.