ORANGE, Calif. --- Biola Swim & Dive is right in the middle of their taper for the biggest meet of the season, the PCSC Championships at Splash Aquatic Center. As part of the training plan, the team took time to take care of business in the final meet of the regular season on Saturday, beating Chapman with a combined team total of 199-163.
"We went into the day today expecting to get a gauge of where we are at," said Head Coach Ryan Kauth. "We wanted them to swim tired. Our goal was to have them be able to compete at a high level despite being broken down."
The women's side won 131-48 courtesy wins in nine of the 11 events swam. The men came up short of a meet win, but got a relay win and two individual event victories in a 115-68 performance.
The 200-medley relay was a great way to start the event as the women's 'A' team managed a win by almost four seconds with a 1:55.89. The men's side also won by about that same amount, going 1:41.91 to edge the Panthers' top team.
"They went out and competed really, really well," said Kauth. "We had some encouraging races and everybody walked away from the meet feeling like we are ready and fit to explode at conference."
Raymond Kam joined Clayton Owens, Jonathan Villa and Matthew Roe on that relay. His performance in the relay set him up well for another outstanding individual day. The junior won both the 100-butterfly (:53.14) and 100-breaststroke (1:00.68) to sweep his individual events with strong races.
In addition to the opening relay, the women's side won the opening individual event as Emily Silzel went 18:38.33 in the longest event of the day, the 1,650-freestyle. It's Silzel's new career-best in that event, edging her previous best mark by about three seconds.
Chapman got narrow wins in the women's 200-freestyle and the 100-breaststroke, but BU was victorious in the rest of the individual events and the final relay to accumulate its 131 points and have its second-largest margin of victory this season.
"It was a great win on the women's side," said Kauth. "It shows how far we've come as a team. We've continued to handle dual meets really, really well, and with our recruiting class coming in we expect that to continue into next year."
The women won six consecutive events in between the two Chapman wins, including a pair of wins from Rebecca Brandt (50-free, 100-fly), a four-second win from Faith McAllister in the 200-IM, three Eagles going 1-2-3 in the 500-free, Silzel smoking the competition in the 100-freestyle (:55.11) and Nicole Chang also cruising to victory in the 100-backstroke (1:00.00).
McAllister, Chang, Rachel Stinchcomb and Silzel came together at the very end of the day and combined to go 1:43.56 in the 200-freestyle relay. It was a six-second win for BU and the combined performance of BU's 'A' and 'B' teams got the team its final 13 points of the competition.
"On the men's side, we are very happy with the way we closed out this dual meet season with some strong swims today," said Kauth. "This team is kind of short-handed due to injury, but with our recruiting class we're really looking forward to seeing what we can do in the 2019-20 dual meet season."
Biola will be in training for the next two weeks leading up to the annual PCSC Championship meet at SPLASH! Aquatic Center Feb. 13-16.
