On Saturday Nov. 20, the Biola swim and dive team had its last meet of the semester against Fresno Pacific University. Fresno has a considerably larger team and thus accumulated the most team points, winning the meet. However, the BU swimmers did well, improving their times.

At the meet, senior April Smith blew away the competition in her races. In the 200 breaststroke, she won first place, winning by nine seconds. Her time was 2:27.23. In the 400 Individual Medley, she came to the wall at 4:43.57, notching another win.

BU swimmers place just seconds behind competitors

Junior Brittney Rosania came in second for the 200 butterfly with a time of 2:17.37 — two seconds behind FPU Stacy Carter. In the 50 freestyle, sophomore Chris Stutzman was barely out-touched by FPU Joel Howard. He swam the race in 22.28 seconds — just a couple one hundredths of a second slower than Howard’s 22.22. Stutzman also won third in the 100 freestyle. In the women’s 100 freestyle, senior Emily Mosbacher won third with a 56.33, one second behind first place FPU Danielle Lavery.

Significant time improvements

The swimmer who made the most significant time drop was freshman Tessa McFarland. She bettered her old time in the 1650 freestyle by a full minute. She swam the race in 21.03.95 seconds and won fourth place overall. Junior Amber Kiel swam the 500 freestyle in 5:34.63, dropping 14 seconds off her best time of the season; she won second place both for this race and for the 200 backstroke with a 2:18.86.

Team bonding over away games

In addition to racing, the team had time to get to know each other better. “It’s really great having away meets,” Kiel said, “because we all spend a lot more time with each other outside of the pool.” The team left on Friday, passing the four hour bus ride by watching movies. They spent that night in Fresno. For dinner, the entire team went to swimmer Bethany Turner’s house, where her family served the team a home-cooked meal. After the trip, sophomore Kristen Aspling said, “Everyone got a lot closer.”

The team will continue to workout for the next couple weeks until finals. They will get about two weeks off for Christmas break, but when the new year comes around, they will be back at the pool again, preparing for the last couple months of the season. Their first meet of the spring semester will be on January 8, when they will swim against California Baptist University in Riverside.