SANTA ROSA, Calif. --- The wind at Santa Rosa Golf & Country Club was not very forgiving in Tuesday's final round of the Sonoma State Spring Invitational. Save for the Biola Eagles, the other top five teams in the field all shot at least 12 strokes worse than their first round score in what turned out to be a high-scoring day for the majority of the field.

But that story didn't carry for Head Coach Jane Carr's Biola Eagles: BU buckled down after a rocky start to shoot a 316 and hold off the three PacWest teams who were behind the Eagles after round one. Biola finished the tournament in sixth place with a two-round total of 630 and had three top-25 finishers in Jules Loibl, Sophia Karnazes and Marcel Manalo.

The sixth-place finish is Biola's best mark of the year in tournaments with more than 10 teams and continues the Eagles streak of finishing in the top half of the leaderboard. Biola has finished in the upper half of the leaderboard in seven of its eight tournaments this year with the PacWest Championships ahead of the Eagles in two weeks time.

Carr's group was one of the quicker teams to adjust to the swirling winds during the second round and deserves a lot of credit for fighting through for par scores. Each of the women who earned top-25 finishes were incredibly successful on the back nine considering the conditions and were crucial in helping Biola play at least one stroke better on Tuesday than four of the five other PacWest teams at the tournament.

Jules Loibl followed her 73 on Monday with an 82 in the final round, but was still able to go +1 with six pars over holes 12 through 18 to wrap up the Invitational in 14th place as Biola's leading finisher. The aforementioned Manalo and Karnazes also had impressive performances on Tuesday, with Karnazes playing even-par over holes 12 through 18 to card a 79 and Manalo shooting a team-best 76 (+4) to move up 27 spots on the leaderboard.

The two-round mark of 158 is the best score over 36 holes that either women has delivered in 2019 while Karnazes is the first Eagles to have back-to-back sub-80 scores in the same tournament since Biola won the NCCAA National Championship in Florida last October.

Combined with Sami Penor's consistent second round for another score of 79, the Eagles were able to hold off Holy Names for sixth place by four strokes and outplayed Dominican and Hawaii Pacific by 29 and 30 strokes, respectively. Biola finished within 16 strokes of both Academy of Art and Point Loma after the Urban Knights and Sea Lions both shot one stroke worse than the Eagles on Tuesday.

The PacWest Championships will be held at the Wigwam Golf Club in Litchfield Park, Arizona from April 22 to 25. The Eagles won their last two tournaments played outside of California, the ERAU Co-Ed Invitational and the NCCAA National Championship, where Penor and company seem to perform very well. The freshman Nevada-native averaged 78.00 strokes per round in the five rounds she's played in Arizona this season while Biola shot 307 per round in the two out-of-state tournaments it's won.