Last Friday and Saturday, the men's and women's track and field teams qualified six more Biola individuals and a relay team for the NAIA Indoor Championship meet. The Eagles traveled last weekend to Santa Barbara to compete in the Sunshine Indoor Invitational, hosted by Westmont College.
To start off the event on Friday, senior Lauren Houck qualified in the field events and finished second in the pentathlon with 2,792 points. Kristan Holding from Westmont College placed first, earning a score of 3,173.
Biola’s presence in the past three meets has been huge, taking into consideration that this is their biggest team yet. With 66 athletes, almost every individual competes in each indoor meet. Although the women have a young team this year, they had a successful day on Saturday with many first place finishers and qualifiers. In the 4×800 relay, freshmen Kellian Hunt, Alexandra Sciarra, Anika Gasner and Alicia Hoverson finished first in 9:23.46. In the pole vault, freshman Nicole Falkenstein qualified for nationals as she met the qualifying mark of 3.48.
In the 5,000-meter run, freshman Neysa Mains and senior Rachel Stump finished first and second with 18:27.77 and 18:29.85 respectively. Freshmen Gasner, Sciarra and Hoverson placed second, third and fourth in the 600-meter run.
Despite their tough competition, the Biola men's team also had notable results. Senior Joseph Harabedian placed first in the 5,000 with 16:27.82. In the mile run, sophomore Andrew Daedler placed fourth as junior Danny Ledesma crossed shortly after. Though both individuals fell short of the automatic qualifying time, they were not too far from first place time of 14:16.15 clocked by Ryan Phillips, from Azusa Pacific University.
“Overall I think the meet went really well,” Houck said. “We’re learning that it’s a bit more harder of a conference to compete in so in a lot of ways that’s good for all of our athletes to be competing with higher caliber athletes.”
In the field events, junior Christian Dunbar finished first in the high jump with a height of 1.74 and junior Megan Dwight finished third in the long jump with a mark of 4.87. Falkenstein finished first in the pole vault and senior Alex Calkins placed second for the men.
Throwing 30.99 meters, junior Whitney Fredenburg placed first in discus throw and freshman Megan Crumley came close in second with 30.37.
“This is the biggest team and the biggest schedule we've ever had, so that's good, and the number of qualifiers is big,” said head coach Jonathan Zimmerman. “It takes weeks to get good and qualify, but they put in hard work during Christmas break so that was good.”
Biola track and field will face the University of La Verne in an all-day dual meet in La Verne on Saturday, Feb. 9.
