MONMOUTH, Ore. --- Biola Men's Cross Country had a chance to follow-up on its third-place PacWest Conference finish with its second-straight berth in the NCAA Division II West Regionals. The Eagles brought their speed to the Ash Creek Preserve course on Saturday to battle the field of 21 teams. 

Head Coach Sean Henning's side took on a wet, wild and very cold course at the Ash Creek Preserve up in Oregon, with the regional hosted by Western Oregon University. The men's side was the third-best PacWest Conference school of the bunch, placing seventh overall just five points back of sixth-place CSU San Marcos.

The Eagles stormed out of the gates and were third as a team at the end of the first split and fourth following the second. Just about halfway through the race their runners settled into spots good enough for seventh and held steady through the remainder of the 10k.

The rival APU Cougars were seventh after the first two splits and then made a charge to push up to a fourth-place finish. The top PacWest team on Saturday was the conference champion Fresno Pacific Sunbirds. FPU would finish second as a team, but their star runner Patric Kiprop won the individual regional title with a run of 30:12.

Biola's number one runner turned out to be Ronald Kigen. The newcomer turned in a phenomenal 31:10 to pace the effort. It was an interesting spread of finishes for BU as Kigen placed 35 seconds ahead of the next Eagle, but the top-5 still all finished within 56 seconds of Kigen. 

Kigen was the ninth overall scorer in the event and 10th overall individual. He was followed by Brady DeHaven. DeHaven's 31:45 was good enough to place him 30th among scorers. This was a four-spot improvement from DeHaven's regional finish back in 2019.

Jerry Baltzer (31:53), Angel Escobar (32:01) and Aidan Arredondo (32:06) rounded out the top-5 scorers for the Eagles. This gave Biola five men inside the top-43 scorers in a field of 136 total scorers. 

Ryan Sorensen (32:19) and Jared Donnel (32:23) were not too far back from the lead group. These men gave Biola a sixth and seventh option for tiebreakers and finished 55th and 58th on the overall individual leaderboard.

The Eagles have a slight chance to earn an at-large selection to the NCAA Division II Men's Cross Country Championships with their seventh place finish on Saturday. National competition is set in Tampa, Florida on November 20. The selections are announced on Monday, November 8.