LA MIRADA, Calif. --- Biola Swim & Dive continued its opening weekend at the SPLASH! Aquatic Center on Saturday as it hosted the annual Pacific Collegiate Swim & Dive Conference pentathlon meet.
 
Easily the most unique meet the Eagles will swim in all year, the pentathlon gives the swimmers a choice to swim five events of varying lengths and strokes. They could choose between the freestyle pentathlon (25, 50, 100, 200 and 500) or the IM pentathlon (100 fly/back/breast/free and 200 IM).
 
"It was really exciting to see so many of our swimmers looking so strong this early in the year. The Pentathlon is a very tiring meet but our swimmers seemed like they kept on getting stronger as the meet went on," said Head Coach Eddie Shepard.

The Eagles' tenacity was rewarded with a bunch of strong finishes, including three top-10 pentathlon finishes. Abby Blake led the way with a third-place mark in the freestyle pentathlon.
 
As Blake does, she dominated the distance events with top-5 finishes in the 200-freestyle and 500-freestyle. She broke her old record of 5:13.38 (from 2012) with a new time of 5:12.83 to place fourth in the event. Blake also added two NAIA National cuts with solid swims in the 100-freestyle and 200-freestyle.
 
Lisa Tixier also had a top-5 pentathlon finish by finishing fourth overall in the distance IM pentathlon. She had three top-3 finishes and met four different NAIA national qualifying standards. Tixier qualified for nationals in the 100-butterfly (:57.34), 100-breaststroke (1:08.72), 100-freestyle (:54.16) and the 200-IM (2:11.49).
 
Kenny Alcosiba was the other top-10 pentathlon finish. He came in eighth in the men's distance IM pentathlon powered by a fifth-place finish in the 100-breaststroke (1:02.98).
 
I was particularly impressed with how well our seniors Kenny Alcosiba and Abby Blake did today," said Shepard. "They really stepped up as leaders and put up some amazing performances that inspired a lot of our younger team members."
 
Biola saw four other women's swimmers achieve new national cuts on day two of the season. Christina Ali added the 200-IM (2:17.30) and the 100-freestyle (:55.91) to her repertoire. Victoria Dunbar qualified with a :56.00 in the 100-freestyle, Angela Kirschner hit the mark in the 200-freestyle (2:02.74) and Jenny London got the cut in the 100-breaststroke (1:11.31).
 
"I think that our performance today shows that we have a lot of positive things ahead as we get moving into the heart of our season," said Shepard.
 
Overall, the men's side finished fourth of the five teams at the meet, and the women finished fifth of six teams. Attending the meet was California Baptist, Pepperdine, Concordia, SOKA University, Fresno Pacific and Azusa Pacific.
 
The next meets come up in the Bay Area as Biola travels for a dual meet at Mills College with College of Idaho on Oct. 23, followed by the Bay Area Invitational Oct. 24.