LOS ANGELES, Calif. --- Biola's Swim & Dive team made its way back to East LA College on Saturday to compete in the middle day of competition at the 2016 Collegiate Winter Invite hosted by La Verne.
 
It was another incredible day of swimming for Head Coach Emily Mosbacher's team as they put forth some excellent efforts in the morning prelims session and evening finals.
 
"Another incredible meet today with many successful races. We've had majority of the team get opportunities to swim in both prelims as well as qualify for a second swim in the evening," said Mosbacher. "What's been the most impressive has been their ability to continue dropping time the way they have been between the first and second swims of the day in each session."
 
Three swims in particular that stood out were Lisa Tixier's first place finish in the 100-butterfly, Michael Severi's second place mark in the 200-freestyle and Andrew Corl's third-place mark in the 100-backstroke. Corl dropped over a second from his morning swim as he bumped his way up into the top-3 and he qualified for nationals with a :54.70.
 
Severi's second-place finish was nearly a victory as the senior finished just over a half-second behind the race winner from La Verne.
 
Those three swims were the only individual top-3 performances from Biola on Saturday, but the team churned out a whole lot more of top-8 finishes, which is fantastic in a meet as deep as this one is.
 
Also, a few of the Eagles' relay teams stood out with strong finishes. Both of Biola's 800-freestyle relay groups earned top-3 finishes, with the women's 'A' team finishing second only to CSU East Bay.
 
Biola's women's relay completed the event in 7:52.72 to edge its next closest competition by seven seconds. Competing in that relay was Rebecca Brandt, Emily Silzel, Bethany Harper and Tixier. Brandt swam a 2:01.22 to lead off the effort and grab herself a national qualifying time.
 
The men's 'A' contingent finished the same relay in 7:13.25 to finish just ahead of Concordia-Irvine and earn a third place finish. That team was made up of Raymond Kam, Andrew Benson, Tom Franicevich and anchored by Severi. It was an incredible effort from the men as they were slotted to finish 10^th in that field.
 
On top of all the success in the individual races at this meet the team managed to get 10 new national qualifying times on Saturday. See the full list below.
 
WOMEN'S:
Lily Barrett – 100-butterfly - 1:01.07
Jennifer Walker – 100-butterfly - 1:01.78
Rebecca Brandt – 100-butterfly - 1:01.22/200-free - 2:01.22
Sammy Dammann – 100-butterfly - :59.53
 
MEN'S:
Andrew Benson – 200-freestyle - 1:46.03
Tom Franicevich – 200-freestyle - 1:45.48.
Michael Severi – 200-freestyle - 1:45.07.
Andrew Corl – 100-backstroke - 54.70
Raymond Kam – 100-breaststroke - :58.93
 
Kam's national cut story is an interesting one. He actually swam well enough in the prelims (1:00.01) to earn the national cut and then really wanted to drop his time even more in the finals. Unfortunately, he was disqualified in the finals on a technicality. So, after two full days of swimming he chose to try it one more time in the evening's time trial event, which was the very last swim of the night. He ended up dropping over a full second!
 
Biola is back in the pool on Sunday for a rare Sunday athletic competition. It's the final day of swimming for this team until late-January and a bunch more student-athletes are hoping for days like those above had on Saturday.