PHILADELPHIA, Pa.—The first Championship of America relay for the Villanova women was the distance medley relay on Friday afternoon and the Wildcats tallied a time of 11:12.22 in rain-soaked conditions on the Franklin Field track. The lineup of sophomore Maya Dorer (New York, N.Y.), freshman Micah Trusty (Philadelphia, Pa.), senior Madison Martinez (Gahanna, Ohio) and fifth year Lydia Olivere (Wilmington, Del.) tallied a ninth place finish in a race that featured five teams whose DMR squads competed at the indoor NCAA Championships earlier this year.
 
"We were excited to stick our nose in with the competition and see where we fell," Olivere said after her anchor leg in Friday's race. "We had a lot of the top national competition that made it to [NCAAs] indoors so we wanted to compete tough and see where we could be."
 
This is the first time that the Villanova quartet raced in a distance medley relay together, although Martinez previously ran the 800 meter leg of the DMR at the Penn Relays last year and Olivere is one of the Wildcats veterans who was competing on her fourth career Championship of America relay in a Villanova singlet. Dorer made her collegiate Penn Relays debut on the team's 4x800 meter relay last year, while Trusty is a local Philadelphia first year collegian who was running her first Championship of America race for the Wildcats.
 
"We had pretty much every grade represented here with a lot of different levels of experience and expertise, so that made today's race a lot of fun," Olivere said.
 
Somewhat unusually for a Championship of America distance race, and perhaps in part as a result of the difficult racing conditions, Boston College and eventual champion Stanford pulled away from the rest of the pack early in the race. The two teams were already three seconds ahead of the pack by the end of the 400 meter leg in the race, while the Cardinal built a lead of nearly four seconds going into the anchor leg. Dorer led off for Villanova and tallied a split of 3:26.40 over her 1200 meters.
 
"Obviously everyone had to compete in these conditions today," Dorer said. "Our coach always tells us that this is where we are supposed to thrive and to be tough because we are built for this. We had a meet at Duke with the same weather as this so we were reminded of that experience which made us ready and prepared for [Friday's race]."
 
Trusty ran a strong 400 meter leg with a split of 55.77 and handed off to Martinez, who had a split of 2:08.34 on the 800 meter leg. After the race, both runners reflected on the lessons learned for a team that has gained valuable experience this year.
 
"The most valuable lesson that we learned today is that there is nowhere but up to go from here," Trusty said. "We can continue to improve and there are multiple opportunities for us to do it throughout the season at BIG EAST and the rest of the schedule. We can definitely improve [from Friday's race]."
 
"Individually it is a good lesson learned today," Martinez said. "We were stuck in the rain and everyone had to compete with that. It was a good learning experience that moving forward we know that we can compete with anything as a team. It's something to work through [as a team]. Being here, we start together and we finish together. That's what it's all about."
 
Olivere passed two runners during her 1600 meter anchor leg and recorded a split of 4:41.72 to close out the race.
 
"I got put in a spot to do some chasing and focus on who was ahead of me," Olivere said. "It was fun to just race and pick off as many people as I could."
 
The only other women's event on the schedule Friday was the heats of the 100 meter hurdles. Senior sprinter Jane Livingston (Lancaster, Pa.) posted a time of 14.02 and placed third in her heat. Saturday's schedule for the Wildcats is highlighted by the Championship of America race in the 4x800 meter relay at 3:06 p.m. Villanova also has athletes entered in the high jump, the pole vault and the javelin.