PHILADELPHIA, Pa.—Owning the second fastest distance medley relay in school history would have been an impressive enough accolade by itself for the team of sophomore Rosie Shay (Middletown, N.J.), junior Olivia Allen (Kingwood, Texas), sophomore Bella Walsh (Wilmington, Del.) and junior Tilly O'Connor (Spring Lake, N.J.), but the nitty gritty details of their race at the 2026 Penn Relays, celebrating with America250 shine an even brighter spotlight on just how strong a performance they had on one of track & field's biggest stages.
 
Villanova finished in third place with a time of 10:48.84, the No. 11 time in Penn Relays carnival history and faster than 15 Wildcats championship relay teams ran in this event. The squad of Shay, Allen, Walsh and O'Connor finished over a second faster than Villanova's indoor school record which was recorded this February, and they came within less than half a second of the absolute school record which has stood for nearly 38 years since the 1988 Penn Relays.
 
The results have been there all year long for the Wildcats, with Friday the biggest stage on which the team could prove its mettle. There were moments during the race in which any of the Villanova athletes could have fallen off or lost ground to the runners around them. It never happened. This isn't that kind of team. The effort was a gutsy one from start to finish, resembling the kinds of performances that are synonymous with the Wildcats unrivaled legacy at the world's oldest and largest track & field competition.
 
Shay set the tone with a memorable leadoff leg which was exactly what Villanova needed to be competitive in the race. She had a split of 3:18.79 over the first 1200 meters, hardly even a fraction of a second off the split of 3:18.7 held by four-time Olympian Sonia O'Sullivan whose school record 1200 meters came leading off for a 1990 Penn Relays Championship of America team. O'Sullivan and Shay are now the only two runners in program history to run a 1200 meter relay split in under 3:20.
 
It took a collegiate record to win Friday's race, and the Wildcats were in sixth place at the first exchange, well ahead of the chase pack and trailing the first five teams to complete the opening leg. Villanova steadily improved its standing over the next two legs of the race, starting with Allen's split of 52.71 over 400 meters and Walsh running 2:03.97 on the 800 meter third leg. Allen moved the Wildcats up a spot into fifth place and Walsh picked off two runners as VU surged into third at the final handoff.
 
This is the second time this year that Allen has run a 400 meter relay split below 53 seconds. She ran 52.5 on February 13 when the Wildcats set an indoor school record with a time of 10:49.98. With today's effort, Allen holds the No. 4 and No. 6 fastest 400 meter splits in school history. Walsh is the 11^th Villanova athlete to run an 800 meter relay leg in less than 2:04. She passed runners from Washington and Clemson during her two laps around the famed Franklin Field oval.
 
O'Connor got the baton with the Wildcats in third place, less than half a second in front of Washington and two seconds in front of Clemson according to official race splits. The anchors for those two teams – Chloe Foerster (4:25.79) from Washington and Judy Kosgei (4:26.32) from the Tigers – are each sub 4:30 milers and have been collegiate All-Americans. They settled in, on O'Connor's hip, for nearly three full laps before pushing her and each other to take sole possession of third place.
 
They didn't. O'Connor never gave an inch: not at the bell, not going into the final turn, and not at the finish line when she held off Kosgei's lean to claim third place for good by a mere two-hundredths of a second (10:48.84 to 10:48.86). Washington, as it had been at the exchange, was still within half a second at 10:49.27.
 
This is still a relatively young Villanova squad which does not yet have the battle-tested experience of some of the top teams in school history who have taken their turn in the spotlight of the Penn Relays. O'Connor was running a Championship of America race for the first time in her Wildcats career. Walsh ran on the 4x800 meter relay last season and had a split of 2:11.48, a mark which she is now 7.5 seconds better than. Shay did anchor the DMR last year (in 4:43.39) and lead off the 4x800, while Allen ran the 400 meter leg of last year's DMR with a split of 54.62 which she has cut two seconds off of in the span of a year.
 
So, maybe this team is a battle-tested one after all. Villanova isn't done for the weekend yet, with the 4x1500 meter relay looming on Saturday afternoon at 12:40 p.m.
 
Friday evening wound up with competition in the college section of the javelin, which got underway just after 6 p.m. following a delay of nearly an hour from its scheduled start. Freshman Hallie Kees (Bryn Mawr, Pa.) and graduate student Teresa Rotolo (Warren, N.J.) each threw in a Villanova singlet at the Penn Relays for the first time in their careers. They posted marks of 38.25 meters and 32.09 meters, respectively. Each of their best throws of the day came on their first attempts.