Biola’s swim team made huge strides in their home meet on Feb. 2 against Concordia University Irvine. The women won 130 points to Concordia’s 109 and several swimmers of both genders qualified for the national championships in Oklahoma City.

Several of the younger Eagles cemented their spot on the heat sheet at nationals during Saturday’s meet. Freshman Victoria Andreas held the lead in her heat and made nationals cuts in the women’s 500-yard freestyle with a time of 5:26.69, barely 0.2 seconds under the qualifying time of 5:26.89 and dropping her seed time of 5:27.51 by nearly a full second.

In addition, freshman Megan Bredenberg sank two nationals times in the 100-yard breaststroke and the 200-yard breaststroke with a 1:11.37 and a 2:34.57, respectively.

“[My goal is to make] top 16 at nationals, if that’s possible,” Bredenberg said. “I’d just like to swim really well overall as a team. We have a really good [200-yard medley] relay set up for nationals, which is really exciting, and I just think we have a really good chance of doing well this year.”

On the men’s side, freshman Eric Sirjord also qualified for two nationals events with a 48.53 in the 100-yard freestyle and a 1:58.28 in the 200-yard butterfly.

Other team members who qualified for nationals at the Concordia meet include freshman Brandon Hughes, sophomore Megan Nerud, freshman Sarah Shepard, sophomore Nick Steadman and sophomore Christine Tixier.