March 9, 2008

BOSTON, Mass. - Freshman Callie Hogan (Bayshore, N.Y.) won the mile run at the ECAC Championship in Boston this weekend and Villanova garnered 19 points in the team standings at the two-day event.

Hogan continued a remarkable freshman season in which she also won the ECAC cross country title in the fall. This weekend she was fifth among 25 runners in the preliminaries of the mile and then beat out eight other runners in the finals to capture the event. Hogan registered a time of 4:49.64 in the finals and, in doing so, improved her time from the preliminary heats (4:54.37) by nearly five seconds.

In her final races of the indoor season, Hogan lowered her previous season best time before the weekend by more than eight seconds with her time in the finals, and built upon a 10th-place finish at the BIG EAST Championship meet last month.

Freshman Audrey Gariepy-Bogui (Potomac, Md.) advanced through preliminary heats and the semifinals to reach the finals of the 60 meter hurdles. She was one of 16 individuals from a field of 22 to race in the semifinals and her time of 8.61 seconds ranked her fifth and was a season-best mark in the semis. She wound up finishing sixth in the finals with a time of 8.77.

The Wildcats placed entries in both the 4x400 meter relay and the distance medley relay. Villanova placed third in the finals of the 4x400 relay with a time of 3:42.51 which was slightly better than the team's second-place time of 3:43.64 in the preliminaries. Sophomore Makalia Griffith (South Ozone Park, N.Y.) anchored the race for the Wildcats and was preceded by Kristen Mahon (Robbinsville, N.J.), Arusha McKenzie (Kingston, Jamaica) and Jessona McDonald (Queens, N.Y.).

In the distance medley relay, the Wildcats placed ninth with a time of 11:53.93 with a quartet that included freshman Amanda Marino (Jackson, N.J.) as the anchor behind freshman Sarah Morrison (Chambersburg, Pa.), junior Jordan Sarruda (Washington Township, N.J.) and sophomore Theresa Rush (Malverne, N.Y.).

Prior to advancing to the finals of the mile run, Hogan was one of three Villanova runners in the preliminary heats. Morrison was 18th in the prelims with a time of 4:58.69 and Marino came in 22nd with a time of 5:02.52.

Rush ran in the 1000 meter run and placed 10th in the preliminaries with a time of 2:53.75. In a field of 27 individuals, she came within 0.09 seconds of advancing outright to the finals.