PHILADELPHIA, Pa.—Distance night at the Penn Relays was one to remember as senior Sadie Sigfstead (Edmonton, Alta.) won the 10,000 meter championship with the fourth-fastest time in meet history. She is the fourth woman from Villanova to win an individual championship event at the world's oldest and largest track & field competition, and she did so with a six-plus second PR of 32:39.54 at historic Franklin Field late Thursday night.
 
Sigfstead stepped onto the awards podium on the infield moments after the race to receive her first career Penn Relays watch, fulfilling a lifelong dream. She was eventually joined on the podium by her fellow senior teammates Emily Robinson (Rogers, Ark.) and Emma McGill (Lebanon, N.J.) who paced the first half of the race in a team effort. It is the third championship all-time for the Wildcats in the women's 10000 meters.
 
"I am happy to get the win as it has always been a goal of mine to get a Penn Relays watch," Sigfstead said. "This is my first one and it is also a confidence booster for me to get a regional time and come back to run healthy."
 
The winning time of 32:39.54 checked off several boxes for Sigfstead, who joins the meet and school record holder Carole Zajac as Penn Relays women's 10K champions. Zajac is the only two-time champion (1992, 1994) the event has ever produced and her mark of 32:22.96 in 1992 stands unmatched, although Sigfstead has now made numerous charges at it. She tallied the No. 4 time in Penn Relays history on Thursday night and the No. 2 time in the Villanova record book.
 
Sigfstead now holds four of the 10 fastest time in school history in the 10K, although of more immediate importance is that she ran the 15^th-fastest time in the nation this season with Thursday's winning performance. That gives her a qualifying time which will earn a return trip to the NCAA East Preliminary next month for the national semifinal round of the 10K. Sigfstead advanced through her race at regionals last season and went on to earn second team All-America honors with a top 10 finish at the NCAA Championships.
 
The trio of Robinson, McGill and Sigfstead broke away from the pack in the earliest stages of the race and later pulled away from Harvard's Zoe Cooper who stayed with them for the first two miles. Robinson mostly handled the pacing duties in that first segment of the race and stepped off the track after a split of 10:36.30 through the first 3200 meters. She had recorded a PR in the 1500 meters earlier in the evening.
 
McGill paced another three laps after Robinson stepped off, and then it was up to Sigfstead the rest of the way. The advantage quickly swelled to a gap of nearly 200 meters between her and the closest challenger. Sigfstead won by a wining margin of more than 53 seconds.
 
It is the second straight year that head coach Gina Procaccio and the Wildcats have won an individual women's championship at the Penn Relays. High jumper Roschell Clayton (Montego Bay, Jamaica) won her first career watch last season. She and Sigfstead join Zajac and javelin thrower Jen Pastore (1996) as the only four Villanova women to be individual champions.
 
Sigfstead has had a whirlwind week of competition, including her first full 10K of the season on Thursday night to go along with a pair of strong performances which came just hours apart at the Virginia Challenge last week. She registered a PR of 4:22.94 in the 1500 meters last Friday (April 18) in Virginia and later won the unseeded section of the 5000 meters by a landslide with a time of 15:55.00. The latter mark is the eighth-fastest outdoor 5K race in school history. These three strong races in a span of a week showcased Sigfstead back at full health after she contended with nagging injuries throughout the 2025 indoor campaign.