LA MIRADA, Calif. --- Biola Swimming and Diving continues to work its way towards the end-of-season conference meet. Today was a big step towards that as the Eagles competed against four PCSC opponents in the pool that will host the championship meet.

The men's side took a second-place team finish, while the women finished fourth with a host of positive individual results against some of the deepest and strongest teams in the PCSC.

"The meet today went extremely well in the eyes of the coaching staff. The swimmers recognize that we're in an awkward stage of the season, and the expectation is that we continue to perform at a high level for a last few competitions," said Head Coach Ryan Kauth. "Being on the brink of tapering for our championship meet, but still have to train hard, and compete at a high level for a couple more meets is a tough spot, but both the men and women handled it perfectly"

The Eagles shared the pool at SPLASH! Aquatic Center with members of the teams from Azusa Pacific, Concordia University Irvine, CSU East Bay and SOKA.

CSUEB and APU both finished in the top-4 at the women's conference meet last season and nearly went 1-2 in today's meet, but Kauth's former school, CUI, snuck up on APU and took second place.On the men's side Concordia took first and Biola second, with both schools having a wide margin of victory over SOKA.

"We found ourselves in a very familiar position, where the scoring format didn't necessarily favor us, being a smaller program," said Kauth. "The swimmers have been there before this season, and they knew that competing against these bigger schools in head-to-head relays would give us a great indicator of how fast of a team we are."

The two teams combined for 11 event wins and 19 total top-3 finishes, with the men bringing in more than half of the wins in relays and individual events.

The men won both the 200-medley relay and the 400-free relay, while the women managed to take home second-place in both events. Matthew Roe, Andrew Benson and Tom Franicevich were involved in both the relays, with Brixton Barron filling in on the freestyle one and Raymond Kam on the medley.

"The relay performances, not only today, but throughout this season, have made huge statements to our conference opponents that the Biola swimming program is definitely a force, and should be on everyone's radar for the PCSC Championships," said Kauth.

Kam and Franicevich also earned individual wins in a solid day. Franicevich swept the middle distance freestyle events with a 49.48 in the 100-free and a 1:49.13 in the 200-free. That 200-free was an epic race to the finish as Franicevich out-touched the second-place swimmer by just over a tenth of a second.

Kam took home three individual victories as he won both breaststroke events and the 100-butterfly. In the 100-buttefly Kam managed to keep just ahead of the four CUI swimmers that took second through fifth place in the event. He swam a 53.41 with the second-place swimmer coming in at 53.47.

The 500-freestyle was another strong event for the men as Noah Reed and Jake Allen went 1-2 in the race. Reed won with a 5:05.00 and Reed was not too far back with a 5:10.86.

With the strength of the women's field a top-3 finish from a relay or in an individual event was just as good as a victory. They set the tone early with the second-place finish in the opening relay as Rachel Stinchcomb, Emily Silzel, Lisa Tixier and Thomine Mortensen swam a 1:51.84 to beat the third-place team from APU by three seconds.

Emily Silzel, last week's Biola Athlete of the Week, kept her positive momentum churning with another solid group of individual performances. The sophomore won the 100-breaststroke with a 1:08.14 to keep the winning team CSU East Bay from a 10th event win. She edged out the second-place Pioneer by two-tenths of a second. Silzel also finished top-3 in the 200-freestyle and 500-freestyle events.

Lisa Tixier won the 100-freestyle and 100-butterfly to claim Biola's final two event wins.

"I am extremely proud of how the team raced today, and it gave me, and the staff, a great boost of confidence as we prepare for the final four weeks of the season," said Kauth.

Biola is back in the pool one week from today when they host Chapman in Lansing Pool on campus on Jan. 27. We will live stream that meet from start to finish at portal.stretchinternet.com/biola beginning at 10:00 a.m.