Liam Murphy is one of the best runners in Villanova history.
The Penn Relays and U.S. Olympic trials are next on his docket.
The senior recently set a personal best in the 1500 meters with a time of 3:36.48. He will run this week at the Penn Relays Championship of America.
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Three seconds.
There’s not much you can do in just three seconds.
But for Villanova track star Liam Murphy, three whole seconds put him in the conversation for one of the greatest runners in school history.
At the Bryan Clay Invitational in Azusa, Calif., on April 13, Murphy ran a 3:36.48 in the 1500 meters, lowering his personal best by nearly three full seconds and qualifying him for this summer’s U.S. Olympic Team Trials.
“Three seconds is huge,” Villanova men’s track coach Marcus O’Sullivan said. “You get to a point where there’s diminishing returns and when you do improve it’s by 10s or half-a-second. So for him to take a three-second leap is a huge quantum leap.”
Murphy’s time was also the second-fastest recorded by a Villanovan in a collegiate race and the sixth-fastest absolute time in school history in the 1500 meters.
“He’s almost as fast as I was as a professional and I was a professional runner for 15 years,” O’Sullivan said. “That’s putting into perspective how good he is.”
Murphy’s 1500-meter relay team of junior Sean Donoghue, junior Devon Comber, and sixth-year Charlie O’Donovan, all posted the metric equivalent of sub-four-minute miles at 3:41.02, 3:41.32, and 3:41.90, respectively.
But it wasn’t just Murphy’s headline time that put him on the map. The New Jersey native has been turning heads for a while now.A
In the 2023-24 indoor season, Murphy racked up award after award: two All-Big East nods, two conference championships, Co-Outstanding Performer in the Big East, capped by being recognized as a first-team All-American title in the 3000 meters.
“[Liam] is very important for the team, but he’s just as important for the program,” O’Sullivan said. “He is now ranking himself as being one of the top we’ve ever had.”
Murphy also broke four school records during the 2023-24 indoor season, including the absolute record in the 3000 meters with a time of 7:42.51, the indoor records in both the mile (3:53.85) and 5000 meters (13:21.20), as well as the 1200 meters Distance Medley Relay where Murphy and his team clocked in at 9:20.44.
But his path to get to this point has been far from linear. It wasn’t until Murphy’s junior year of high school that he decided to pursue track in college.
“I originally played soccer in high school, but I saw my brother have success with running … and all the doors it opened for him,” Murphy said. “So then I started going all in on running … I became more serious and saw it as something I could potentially do in college.”
And when Murphy started to look into colleges, becoming a Wildcat wasn’t even on his radar.
“I actually had no idea about Villanova — all the history here and how great of a program it is,” he said.
It was when current teammate Sean Dolan, who Murphy competed against in high school, committed to Villanova that Murphy was influenced to take a trip to Lancaster Ave.
“He was a top runner in the country and I saw him commit to Villanova, so that’s what opened my eyes to potentially going here,” he said. “And then I saw it was only an hour away from my home, so I thought it would be a really good fit for me.”
Murphy would go on to commit to Villanova, just to arrive his freshman year to a world, and campus, turned upside down.
“When the pandemic happened … it was a whole mess coming in here my freshman year,” Murphy said. “It got me off to a rough start with running. And then things really weren’t going my way with running the first two years of college.”
But just as Murphy learned to love running in high school, he also learned to love training in college.
“I knew if I kept doing it every day and stacking the training week by week and month by month it [would] eventually pay off,” he said. “That’s the spot I’m at now.”
And the feeling is mutual from his coaches. “I think Liam took a little bit of time to mature and took a little bit of time to understand his full responsibility of what he was capable of doing,” O’Sullivan said. “... but [Liam] is a really good quintessential representation of what our program has become in the modern day. He’s exceptionally important to the team, and he’s very, very important to the program.”
Now in his senior season, Murphy will have a chance to prove his importance to both the team and the program in upcoming meets.
In 2023, Murphy anchored a Penn Relays Championship of America title in the 4 x mile — a feat he hopes to accomplish again this weekend.
“I want to get the win again [at the Penn Relays],” Murphy said. “But the Olympic Trials [are] definitely in the back of my mind, because it’s obviously the biggest American race of the year.”
The Penn Relays start Thursday, while the U.S. Olympic Trials are set for June 21-30 in Eugene, Ore.
