VILLANOVA, Pa.—Junior thrower Tristan Bolinsky (Gordon, Pa.) was the individual high point scorer and the most outstanding performer of the field events at the 2024 BIG EAST Track and Field Championships presented by JEEP, accolades clinched with a pair of historic performances to close out the outdoor conference meet. Fifth year middle distance runner Sean Dolan (Ewing, N.J.) went undefeated in his collegiate career in BIG EAST open 800 meter races and set multiple records for career 800 meter titles in conference history. He erased the standing championship record in the event, and nearly the school record.
 
Senior distance runner Liam Murphy (Millstone, N.J.) broke a 43-year old stadium record and a 37-year old championship meet record in the 1500 meters. Sophomore sprinter Amiri Prescod (Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago) won a BIG EAST title and became the first Villanova athlete in 18 years to join the program's top-10 performance list in the 100 meters. A large senior class of Wildcats came forward to accept the BIG EAST runner-up team trophy, the team's sixth podium finish since 2014 but its first in five years placing first or second in the team standings at the conference championships.
 
All of the above happened in the span of less than four hours on Saturday afternoon at Villanova Stadium. Villanova scored 162 points in this weekend's BIG EAST Championships to finish second out of nine teams. With the conference meet on their home track for the second straight year, the Wildcats matched team champion Connecticut with seven individual event titles and tallied 15 podium finishes over three memorable days of competition. Bolinsky is the first Villanova athlete indoors or outdoors to win two major awards in the same year at the BIG EAST meet. He scored an astonishing 28 points this weekend.
 
It all started with Bolinsky winning a championship and setting a school record in the hammer on Thursday evening. He added more superlatives on Saturday when he won the shot put title with a personal best throw of 16.42 meters. Bolinsky's third throw of the day soared well over a meter past his previous PR (15.01m) set indoors at Penn State earlier this year. He also became the Wildcats first thrower since 2007 to join the program's top-10 list in the shot put, sliding in at No. 10 overall and No. 6 on the school's all-time outdoor list. Bolinsky is the first athlete in program history to win career titles in both the hammer and the shot put, let alone in the same year.
 
Want more? He still had the discus later on Saturday afternoon, his best event prior to this weekend based on a conference championship he won in the event as a freshman two years ago. Bolinsky threw 48.62 meters in the discus on Saturday and finished second in that event to win his second medal of the day and third of the weekend. He joins former Villanova jumper Elbert Maxwell as the only men's athletes in school history to record podium finishes in three individual events in the same year at a BIG EAST meet. Maxwell did so in the high jump, the long jump and the triple jump both indoors and outdoors in 2015.
 
Prior to the calendar flipping to 2024, no athlete in BIG EAST history had won the men's 800 meters three times indoors. Or four times outdoors. Certainly not seven times total. Dolan has done all of that. He completed the four-peat Saturday with one of the fastest races in Wildcats history. Dolan burst away from the pack with 200 meters to go and tore the rest of the way to the finish line for a winning time of 1:45.83. That time isn't a typo, just the fastest 800 meter race by a Villanovan since August 30, 1985 when John Marshall was competing at the World University Games in Kobe, Japan and recorded a time of 1:45.32. Dolan was within two hundredths of a second of equaling the Wildcats fastest-ever 800 meter race to be run during the confines of the collegiate season. That record – 1:45.81 – was set by Don Paige on June 7, 1980.
 
Dolan ran 14 career open 800 meter races at the BIG EAST Championships, including preliminary heats and finals both indoors and outdoors. All 14 of those races had something in common: they ended with Dolan in first place. He went undefeated in the event during his collegiate career and posted a top-five NCAA time this season, pending the outcomes of other conference championships taking place around the nation this weekend. Dolan beat the previous BIG EAST meet record of 1:47.21 set by Tracey Baskin in 1987. Freshman Dan Watcke (Hinsdale, Ill.) also beat the old record and was second to Dolan with a personal best time of 1:47.00 in Saturday's final. Watcke adds himself to the all-time Villanova performance list in a tie for seventh place.
 
The first championship record to fall on Saturday came in the first individual final of the day. Murphy captured the straight-to-final 1500 meters in 3:39.00, breaking the Villanova Stadium record of 3:40.24 set by Villanovan Sydney Maree in 1981 and the BIG EAST meet record of 3:40.62 set by another Wildcats alum – Gerry O'Reilly – in 1987. Sixth year collegian Charlie O'Donovan (Cork, Ireland) came in second to Murphy in 3:40.36; the first four finishers across the line all eclipsed the previous meet record.
 
Villanova's list of stadium records is starting to read like a Liam Murphy biography. No other athlete is currently a part of more than one Villanova Stadium record in individual events and relays. Murphy owns the stadium records in the 1500 meters (3:39.00), the 5000 meters (3:40.24) and was part of a stadium record in the 4x800 meter relay (7:17.96).
 
Only two Wildcats ever had won BIG EAST titles in the men's 100 meters before Prescod etched his name onto that list on Saturday afternoon. He added to his first career conference title in the 60 meters indoors earlier this year with a thrilling race in the final of the 100 meters. It took thousandths of a second to find differentiation between Prescod and Dominic Cole from DePaul at the finish line. Prescod's time was 10.475, Cole's 10.480.
 
Not since Kevin Okolie on April 14, 2006 had a Villanova sprinter broken onto the Wildcats all-time performance list (top-10) in the 100 meters. Prescod now ranks sixth on that list at 10.48 and is the program's fastest competitor in the event since Matthew Whigham ran 10.40 on May 24, 1997. Later in the day, Prescod finished third in the 200 meters to earn All-BIG EAST honors with a time of 21.46.
 
Villanova continues its season at the NCAA East Preliminary meet later this month.