FULLERTON, Calif. --- Biola cross country split forces for the weekend, as the first group opened things up at CSU Fullerton. A field of seven Eagles on the women's and six on the men's sides competed on Friday at the John Elders Invitational.

The BU women ran a 5k amongst a field of 17 teams. A team effort led to a seventh place finish at 196 points.

A pack of four paced the Biola group on Friday afternoon. BU placed four in between 38th and 42nd including Caroline Stetina, Kaela Berretta, Keira Coye and Emma Gutierrez. Stetina was the first Eagle to cross the finish line in 38th place at 18:55.1, which beat her previous best time by four seconds.

Berretta and Coye followed in 39th and 40th, landing within one second of each other. True freshman Gutierrez was not far behind, nabbing 42nd with a time of 19:01.5.

Amy Payne came through next for BU. The freshman took 51st place with a time of 19:17.0 to round out the scorers for Biola. 

The men collected 296 points with great help from Luke Poarch. The rookie runner pushed ahead and posted a top-50 finish. Poarch recorded a time of 25:57.5 in the 8k race on Friday.

The team's total was good enough for 10th place in a field of 16 complete squads. The rest of the squad behind Poarch were placed in between 119th and 147th with over 200 runners competing on Friday.

Freshmen continued to make their presence felt in the race with Elijah Suwyn, Aiden Sherer and Zachary Wallace, coming in next. Suwyn and Sherer netted times under 28 minutes, while placing in the top 121.

The rest of the BU squad will take to the course at the NCAA Division II Pre-Nationals race on Saturday in University Place, Washington.