BOSTON, Mass.—Senior distance runner
Liam Murphy (Millstone, N.J.) opened the indoor track & field season with a historic performance in Boston on Saturday night. Murphy broke Villanova's indoor school record in the 5,000 meters with a time of 13:21.20 and was less than six-tenths of a second away from bettering the absolute school record which has stood for more than 44 years.
In only his second collegiate 5K race Murphy broke the Wildcats previous indoor mark of 13:37.73 which was set by Olympian Patrick Tiernan on February 14, 2014 at Iowa State. Murphy shattered both that mark and his previous personal best of 13:43.32 which won him a BIG EAST title earlier this year during the outdoor track & field season. He was competing on Saturday night in the Sharon Colyear-Danville Season Opener at the Track & Tennis Center on the Boston University campus.
Murphy is coming off an outstanding cross country campaign in which he was an All-American to go along with winning individual titles at both the BIG EAST Championships and the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional. The national championships were held on November 18 and it is been common in recent years for top runners to build on their fitness levels coming out of cross country and look to establish fast times on the track early in the indoor season.
That was the case for Murphy on Saturday night as he registered the third-fastest time by a Villanova runner in the 5000 meters. Tiernan ran 13:20.88 on June 29, 2016 in Finland in the runup to his Olympics debut in Brazil later that summer, while the absolute school record of 13:20.63 has stood since being set by Sydney Maree on June 2, 1979 at the NCAA Championships in Champaign, Ill. The mark remains one of the longest standing distance records in Wildcats history.
A new collegiate record was set in the heat that Murphy competed in on Saturday when runners from Harvard and Stanford each eclipsed the previous indoor collegiate mark of 13:08.28. Graham Blanks from Harvard won the race in 13:03.78, followed by Ky Robinson from Stanford in 13:06.42. Murphy was the fifth collegiate runner across the finish line.
Murphy is nearing the end of a calendar year which has seen him be an All-American in all three seasons (cross country, indoor, outdoor) and win individual BIG EAST titles in cross country, indoors (3000 meters) and outdoors (5000 meters) in addition to anchoring a Championship of America title in the 4xMile relay at the Penn Relays.
Villanova will next compete when the majority of its roster opens the indoor season on January 13 in the Penn 10-Team Select meet hosted by Penn at the Ocean Breeze Track & Field Athletic Complex in Staten Island.
