CHESTER, Pa.—The vaunted Villanova men's track & field sub-four minute mile club added a member on Friday night when freshman Marco Langon (Raritan, N.J.) was clocked in 3:58.82 in the Widener Invitational at Leslie C. Quick Jr. Stadium. Langon, who is redshirting the 2023 outdoor season, was competing unattached at the meet and he paced a field of 10 runners in the elite section of the mile to add himself to the ranks of the top milers in school history.
 
This is the fifth consecutive calendar year in which the Wildcats have had a men's distance runner record his first career sub-four mile. The streak began when Casey Comber ran 3:57.80 in February 2019 and has continued with current fifth year runner Charlie O'Donovan (Cork, Ireland) running 3:58.95 in February 2020. The other recent sub-four milers from Villanova are current senior Sean Dolan (Ewing, N.J.) who ran 3:57.20 in March 2021 and junior Liam Murphy (Millstone, N.J.) whose first career sub-four time was 3:59.63 in January 2022.
 
Langon is the 19^th sub-four minute miler from Villanova who has been coached by Marcus O'Sullivan in his 25 years leading the Wildcats program and working specifically with the team's distance runners. O'Sullivan is himself the headliner of the Villanova group of sub-four milers and is one of three runners in history to accomplish the feat more than 100 times. Langon's race on Friday night makes this at least the fourth time during O'Sullivan's coaching career that the Wildcats have had four or more sub-four milers on the roster at the same time.
 
Friday's race was a wire-to-wire performance for Langon, who went out with the lead and closed with a final lap of 57.39 to come in just over nine-tenths of a second faster than Michael Keehan, the runner-up from Penn who also broke four minutes with a time of 3:59.73. It was the second sensational performance in the past eight days for Langon, who recorded an unattached time of 13:47.42 in the 5000 meters during the Larry Ellis Invitational at Princeton last Friday.
 
There were very nearly three new sub-four Villanova milers to come out of the race at Widener. Fifth year distance runner Evan Addison (Collegeville, Pa.) and redshirt freshman Devon Comber (Ambler, Pa.) came within mere strides of crossing the finish line in under four minutes. Addison placed third in the race with a tantalizingly close time of 4:00.08 and Comber was on his heels in fourth place in 4:00.24. The times are personal bests for each runner.
 
Thirty of the 45 members of Villanova's sub-four mile club have accomplished the feat in both the mile and the metric equivalent of times below 3:42.20 in the 1500 meters.