Box Score LA MIRADA, Calif. --- Biola Women's Tennis pushed the San Diego Christian Hawks with fiesty play and a number of long rallies on Saturday afternoon.

The Eagles were one break of serve away from taking the doubles point and split the first two sets at the No. 4 and No. 5 singles flights. But the 13th-ranked team in the NAIA stood up to all challenges and took the dual match by a score of 4-1.

"I thought we played well in the doubles. We just started off slow and had to work back from deficits," said Head Coach David Goodman. "It's really important for us to come out with a lot of energy and get off to strong starts, especially because San Diego Christian a very tough team and is a top team in the NAIA."

San Diego Christian only fielded five women from their roster for Saturday's match, so the Eagles came into the match with a point in hand in singles and only needing one doubles victory to win the doubles decision.

Aleksandra Emilianova and Tatiana Harvey had a solid 6-3 victory at No. 2 doubles to make the No. 1 fixture the rubber match. And Sarah Urbanke and Nadine Geschke put the home team in a compromising position by building a 5-3 lead just across the way. Biola's tandem of Esther Lee and Lauren Lee dug deep in response and made it 5-4 on Esther's serve. But San Diego Christian returned the favor and evened the score at 1-1 headed into the singles portion of the dual.  

Freshman Ines Diaz jumped out to another strong start in her singles match as the No. 2 against Geschke and led 5-2 in the match. But Geschke's power game from the baseline clicked and found a new level of consistency to force the first set into a tiebreak that Geschke would also win.

Sarah Morgan and Allison Torres both took the second sets of their singles matchups while Geschke and Emilianova took points two and three for the Hawks. Torres' hard work to fight through long rallies early in the match was finally rewarded when her opponent finally started to make unforced errors and dropped the set, 6-4. While Morgan played classic thinking fan's tennis in her second set and also benefited from unforced errors on the way to a 6-2 set win.

"Overall I thought we had a lot of close matches and we're competitive with San Diego Christian, which is a good sign this early in the season," said Goodman. "We are still still dealing with a lot of injuries and are trying to get our girls well which will make a strong impact for the remainder of the season."

After playing two matches in three days the Eagles will have a complete rest day on Sunday before returning to the Biola Tennis Center to prepare for their next match. Biola is scheduled to host Concordia on Wednesday at 2 p.m.