LONG BEACH, Calif.--- The Biola University Swim & Dive team got the season started with the PCSC Relays and Pentathlon meets at Long Beach City College last weekend.

The women competed against Azusa Pacific, Concordia, Westmont, and the Master's back-to-back with the PCSC Relays occurring on Friday and the PCSC Pentathlon on Saturday. On the men's side, they drew familiar opponents Concordia and The Master's. It's the first time since the 2019-20 the season began with the PCSC special events on opening weekend.

"It was exciting to see our women compete for the first time this season," said head swimming and diving coach Nate Harding. "This is a special group of young ladies that I am excited to go on a journey with this season. Our distance swimmers, sprinters, and strokers all raced with tremendous confidence and team spirit this weekend.

PCSC Relays
The first day of competition is all relays. The event featured 10 unique relays for each gender, ranging from the 3x500-yard freestyle relay to the 500-yard freestyle relay split into legs of 50-, 100-, 150- and 200-yards. Biola's women finished third or higher in nine of the 10 events, with one first place finish in the 3x100-yard breaststroke.

Coco Friedley, Anna Haaksma, Sofia Chavez-Varela and Megan Tolman were the 300-yard breaststroke group that beat runner up CUI by four seconds with the time of 3:26.52.
 
Biola's men had five first place finishes at the PCSC Relays, including first place finishes in the 3x100-yard backstroke, 3x100-yard breaststroke, 3x500-yard freestyle, 400-IM, and the 4x100-yard freestyle. 
 
Caden Drefs, Alejandro Marchesini and Nathan Griffin were the three-man group to place first in the 3x100 backstroke, beating CUI by a wide margin of 10 seconds (2:38.10).
 
Incredibly, the 300-yard breaststroke group (Dylan Pon, Noah Benson, Jacob Haaksma) tied for first with Concordia with a time of 2:59.85. 
 
The next group of champions were Marchesini, Michael Maurer, and Donatus Onu, who earned first place in the 3x500-yard freestyle with a time of 14:44.63.
 
Sean Rho, Ryan Monrean, Haaksma and Benson were then the first group to finish in the 400-yard IM, two seconds ahead of Concordia with a time of 3:41.03.
 
BU finished the PCSC Relays with another first place mark in the 400-yard freestyle relay. Patrick Waggoner, Marchesini, Tanner Smith and Haaksma teamed up to finish 3:13.38, 56-hundredths of a second ahead of CUI (3:13.94).
 
Haaksma and Marchesini led the Eagles with three first place finishes and Benson held the third most with two.
 
"​​It was fun to watch our guys compete with conference rivals like Concordia. This season will be another competitive season for our team," said Harding. "Our men's team was eager to get the season started against familiar teams in our conference"
 
On Saturday the two teams shifted their attention from relays to individual performance with the pentathlon meet.

PCSC Pentathlon
The PCSC Pentathlon meet has each swimmer select one set of five events to compete in. There is a freestyle pentathlon, featuring five freestyle events of varying lengths and also a sprint IM and distance IM pentathlon featuring events of all different strokes.

On the women's side, five Eagles raced in the Distance IM and three ranked in the top-10 overall. Liza Parahnevich, Chavez-Varela and Friedley were the Eagles' top-10 finishers. Parahnevich led BU, placing third overall (6:23), Chavez-Varela followed in fifth (6:28.70) and Friedley rounded up seventh (6.41.24). 

Seven women competed in the Freestyle pentatlon and two breached the top-10. Mirsha Lora led Biola in fourth (8:51.67) and Kolya Vos was right behind her in fifth (8:59.62).
 
From the men's contingent, Biola had 15 swimmers compete in the Distance IM and freestyle pentathlons. BU won each pentathlon they participated in, thanks to impressive performances by Rho and Marchesini who gave the Eagles their first-place finishes.

The Eagles were also responsible for two of the top three finishes in both pentathlons. 

Rho and Haaksma placed first and third respectively in the distance IM. Rho was the first of 10 swimmers to finish with a speedy time of 5:44.39. Haaksma, who placed third, finished at 5:45.33 which was just 33-hundredths of a second behind the second-place finisher, CUI's Hunter May (5:45).

The freestyle pentathlon contained a pool of 19 swimmers that Marchesini dominated. Marchesini was nine seconds ahead of his nearest competitor, finishing with a time of 7:57.35.

The runner-up for the freestyle pentathlon was CUI's Trevor Dixon (8:06.45) and third-best was Biola's Onu (8:07.64).

Biola competes next on Saturday, October 8 at the Rodionoff Invite in Malibu, California.