It wasn’t the Penn Relays, but the athletes enjoyed the competition in the ‘Philly Mets’ at Franklin Field

There wasn’t a single Jamaican flag waving. The crowd was scattered all around cavernous Franklin Field instead of being tightly packed together. The area of seats in the northeast part of the stadium known as the “Wooo!!!” corner was mostly empty.

Even without the electricity of a typical Penn Relays, there still were reminders Saturday at the Philadelphia Metropolitan Collegiate Invitational, from billboards honoring the sponsors to mini-plaques reminiscent of the carnival given to winning relay teams.

The Penn Relays hosted the “Philly Mets” under overcast skies with a cool breeze and the action on the track was spirited, even on a smaller scale with 10 relays and a number of individual events that went on into the evening. And two carnival veterans from Villanova enjoyed themselves in the meet that was scaled down because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Coming down to Penn is always cool,” said Casey Comber, a member of two winning relays. “The stadium is cool. Penn Relays is always such a priority for Villanova. We always get up for it. We weren’t thinking weeks ahead about it because it was a smaller deal. It’s not as big an event this year but it still is Penn and it’s still exciting.”

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“It was definitely different,” said McKenna Keegan, the anchor for the Wildcats’ two victories on the women’s side, “but we were still pushing it and made an effort to create some sort of Penn Relays for us to be able to enjoy because we definitely missed it last week. It was different with the lack of fans but we were so lucky to be able to do something. We knew we had to get the job done.”

The Wildcats won four of 10 relays contested – two men’s and two women’s. Penn captured two victories and Temple, Delaware, Rider and TCNJ picked up one apiece.

Comber, a graduate student who owns two Penn Relays watches from the 2018 season, ran the 1,200-meter leadoff Saturday on the distance medley relay team, and came back about two hours later to run the second leg on the 4x800-meter relay. The Wildcats clocked 9 minutes, 38.81 seconds for the DMR and 7:27.60 for the 4x800.

The Villanova women came home first in the women’s sprint medley and 4x400 relays. As anchor, Keegan brought it home, clocking 2:06.17 for 800 in the sprint medley and 52.67 seconds in the 4x400.

The Wildcats moved up the qualifying list for next month’s NCAA East preliminaries by running a season-best 3:38.78 in the 4x400, which followed a 3:49.82 time in the sprint medley. Senior Amari Onque-Shabazz also ran legs on both teams.

“We were excited after the 4x4 because we ran our best time of the season,” Keegan said. “We wanted to get into the 3:38 range so that was exciting for us as well. So my memories here have been nothing but amazing memories and it’s always such a special experience no matter what.”

Penn won the women’s 4x800 and the men’s 4x400, getting strong performances on the last two legs of the latter event from Antaures Jackson (47.53 seconds) and anchor Robbie Ruppel (47.50).

Other wins were from Temple in the women’s distance medley (11:57.95), Delaware in the women’s 4x100 (46.20), Rider in the men’s 4x100 (41.52) and TCNJ in the men’s sprint medley (3:28.26).

Individual track event winners were Keegan Hughes of Villanova in the men’s 400-meter hurdles (52.95), Haley Rizek of Penn in the women’s 400 hurdles (59.68), Enoch Cheung of Penn in the men’s 110 hurdles (14.68) and Jada Thomas of Villanova in the women’s 100 hurdles (13.91).

Penn’s field participants won six events, three of them coming from athletes who entered as the top seed -- Chudi Ikpeazu in the men’s discus with a throw of 191 feet, 8 inches; Ashley Anumba in the women’s discus at 183-8, and Camille Dickson in the women’s long jump with a program record leap of 20-5 ¾.

Villanova All-American Sanaa Barnes won the high jump at 5-11 ½.

On Saturday night, the steeplechase races were won by Penn’s Michael Keehan in 8:48.54 and Villanova’s Lydia Olivere in 10:03.89. Ira Daly of St. Joseph’s won the men’s 1,500 in 3:58.90 and Grace Moore of Temple clocked 4:19.56 to win the women’s 1,500.