LA MIRADA, Calif. --- Biola Swim & Dive got off to a victorious start to the 2019-20 season on Friday, winning the combined team championship at the 2019 Pacific Collegiate Swim & Dive Conference relay meet.

"We're getting better in the pool, better on the boards and I'm really excited to see what the future holds," said Kauth. "We wanted to put the conference on notice and show them what we could do. We did that today."

The win is the Eagles' second combined score title of the last two seasons and the first time BU has taken the crown at the PCSC Relays. The men's team accounted for 87 points, finishing second to Fresno Pacific by the narrowest of margins (88 points). The women's team was third in a seven-team field with 82 total points. BU was just six points behind Azusa Pacific as the top two NCAA Division II schools in the bunch.

Biola's 169 total points was tops among teams in attendance on day one, edging the Sunbirds of FPU by 14 points and cruising past the third-place Concordia Eagles by 40.

"I thought we did a really good job today. We showed our depth and showed we can hang with some of the big teams in the PCSC," said Kauth. "All of the women's teams were really well represented and we wanted to get to the point where we can show we can compete with those teams and I think we did that today."

Kauth went on about how the relay meet is not one that's setup well to showcase Biola's strengths as a team. The event layout favors a sprint-heavy team, where Kauth describes BU as a team that's developing some great sprinters, but really thrives in the middle distances and 200s of stroke. The fact the Eagles could place as well as they did despite not playing into their strong suit gives hope for the future.

"This is a testament to how far we've come and what we've done so far. Not only in this season, but also in building for a future team," said Kauth. "We can really wreak havoc in this conference."

On the day, the Eagles had 18 total top-3 relay finishes, which were highlighted by three event wins. Biola's depth shone through in the varied distance 500-freestyle relay, which has one 50-yard leg, one 100-yard leg, one 150-yard leg and one 200-yard leg.

Both the men and women's sides won that event. The ladies were led by an 'A' group of Annie Bristow, Kolya Vos, Kasidee Pascoe and Liza Parahnevich. They swam the 500 yards in 4:45.39 to beat the second-place quartet from Azusa Pacific by three-and-a-half seconds.

On the men's side Raymond Kam, Andrew Benson, Jonas Huckabay and Patrick Waggoner went 4:14.70 to beat the second-place group of Sunbirds by over four seconds.

The third event win came also on the men's side in the 4x100-IM relay. Colin Reeve, Tanner Smith, Nathan Schwantes and Raymond Kam teamed up to swim 3:41.61 for a win by less than half-a-second.

Of the three winning relays, seven swimmers are in their first season on the team.

The wins were not the only impressive parts of the day, though. Perhaps as impressive was the illustration of depth by BU. There were five different relays where Biola managed both it's 'A' and 'B' relays inside of the top-5 overall.

"Across the board versus APU, Concordia and LMU our 'B' relays really were showing that we can compete, too," said Kauth. "The biggest relay that really showed our depth was the 50-, 100-, 150-, 200-freestyle relay. We won that by over three-and-a-half seconds.The men also won by over four seconds."

The fun continues Saturday at SPLASH! As the PCSC hosts its annual pentathlon meet. The Eagles will have swimmers competing in one of four different collections of events, looking for the top average time.

See tomorrow's full event list below. Competition begins at 10 a.m. at SPLASH!

Pentathlon Events
200 freestyle
100 butterfly
50 butterfly
25 freestyle
100 backstroke
50 backstroke
500 freestyle
100 breaststroke
50 breaststroke
100 freestyle
100 IM
200 IM
50 freestyle