LA MIRADA, Calif. --- Biola Tennis showed massive improvement all around at the 2015 USTA/ITA Western Regional NAIA Championships that were played from Sept. 24-26 at the Biola Tennis Center and La Mirada Regional Park.
 
Lucas Lee and Luke Mountain highlighted the Eagles' performance at the non-sanctioned tournament with a finals appearance in the men's doubles bracket, but Biola got wins from men and women's singles and men and women's doubles, which is great progress from the teams' showings in 2014.
 
Lee and Mountain had a challenging path through the men's doubles bracket that featured competition from Arizona Christian, Hope International, San Diego Christian and Westmont.
 
The duo had to win three matches in order to earn their place in the finals against Alessandro Moriano and Daniel Superlano in Saturday's finals. The narrowest victory in the preceding matches actually came in Biola's opening round (Round of 16) victory over an opponent from Hope International. Biola's top pairing escaped with a 9-7 victory before cruising through the rest of the bracket until the finals with 8-4 and 8-2 victories.
 
"Lucas and Luke were down two breaks early but fought back to win that match 9-7," said Head Coach Brent Worthington. "I was really proud of how well they composed themselves and fought through a slow start to finish really well."
 
The final match was tough for the two, who until this fall had not had the chance to play together competitively since the spring of 2014. They fell to the top duo from SDC in back-to-back 6-3 sets.
 
The men's singles play ended a bit earlier that the finals, but still saw some small success along the way.
 
Both Biola singles victories came on the first day when Joe Turnquist and David Garcia both won their opening round matchups. Turnquist won a tiebreaker to take down David Castano of Arizona Christian before ultimately bowing out against Michael Rajazanov in the Round of 16. Rajazanov went on to be a singles finalist. Garcia got a tiebreaker victory over David Akin of Westmont before falling to Seth Moore of ACU in the next round. Moore was later eliminated by the bracket champion.
 
"Both Joe and David fought hard and played well to win their singles matches," said Worthington.
 
Kathryn Ashford had the most success in women's singles as she rode her first round bye and round-two victory into a quarterfinals appearance, where she ultimately fell in straight sets to Isabel Lee of Westmont.
 
Madeline Heer and Susan Carmichael each also got a singles victory, but the storyline revolving around them is more about the progress they made as a pair in doubles play.
 
The pairing was the only of Biola's three duos to manage a victory at the tournament, and better yet they posted to victories to stage a run into the bracket semifinals.
 
Heer and Carmichael got an 8-4 win over opponents from San Diego Christian in the opening round and then looked especially sharp in an 8-1 win over a duo from HIU in the quarterfinals.
 
The run ended when they went up against Arizona Christian's top pairing in the semis. That pairing went on to lose in a tiebreaker in an incredible doubles final.
 
Biola Tennis now shuts down competitively until its spring season begins in February.