Most students go through their senior year of high school applying for colleges, writing scholarship essays and getting involved in every school activity, trying to soak up their final high school experiences. However, one Biola student didn’t get to experience the typical highs and lows that come along with senior year. This is because freshman biblical studies major Luke Mountain arrived at Biola after his junior year in high school.

An early start

His journey started way back in middle school. Mountain grew up in Mission Viejo — not too far from Biola. He had a passion for tennis and found himself leaving school at noon to go practice tennis for hours.

Mountain would make the trek to the Advantage Tennis Academy five days a week and practice for four or five hours each visit. He was very committed and as high school approached, his parents decided to enroll him at the academy full time.

To be enrolled at the academy, he had to take a year off of school to focus his attention completely on his tennis skills. This meant he would be a junior as his pals were graduating, but he didn’t mind.

“I thought tennis would be my path,” Mountain said.

This “incubation period” as his coaches called it, would give him the upper hand as a senior. He would be 19 while his competitors were 18, which would make it a lot easier to earn scholarships for Division I schools. By his second year in the program, Mountain was playing in national and professional tournaments. He found it to be a humbling experience, as he compared himself to the best tennis players in the United States.

Planning ahead

Mountain enjoyed his two years at the tennis academy, but with only 30 kids at the school, he realized he was “ready to have a real high school experience.”  Mountain transferred to his local high school and continued to go to the academy after school.

Naturally, he joined the tennis team. By junior year, his mind was set. He would play tennis for the next two years and get scholarships to the best D-I schools in the country.

“Everything was on track for my plan,” Mountain said.

It was around this time that all his friends started hearing back from the colleges they applied to and making decisions on where they were going. Mountain got an unsettling feeling as he watched his friends prepare for college.

It wasn’t that he disliked tennis, but Mountain wondered if he wanted to stay home for another year and a half. He felt as though he would be missing out on the next chapter of his life that should already have been starting.

“I just doubted completely everything we had planned,” Mountain said.

One step back

He prayed that God would make the decision for him on whether or not he should pursue tennis. On Apr. 1, 2013, Mountain went mountain biking with his dad. As he tried to keep up with his father, he hit a huge dip and went flying off, dislocating his right shoulder in the process.

“It was really awful timing,” Mountain said.

Mountain’s physical therapist said his shoulder would take three months to heal in order to play tennis again. Three months, however, was too long for him to get back into the swing of things before college recruiters came looking for young talented players. Mountain began to think that maybe God didn’t want him playing tennis in college. He and his parents began to talk through his options.

Two steps forward

Before his shoulder injury, Mountain had not even considered Biola. He had always believed that he was called to be a pastor, but he was never sure where that fit in his plan. Now that D-I schools weren’t an option, Biola became a very real possibility. He tested out of high school in April of his junior year and started taking the necessary steps toward Biola.

His admissions counselor, Alicia Morales, encouraged him to apply even though national decision day had passed. Mountain had a lot to do since he applied to Biola so late in the year. He took his SAT in June and sent it in as soon as he could.

After what seemed like months, Mountain received his acceptance letter. He was elated, but had another hurdle yet to jump — the FAFSA. His family was stressed because the deadline had already passed, but God had his hand on them and pushed their application through, according to Mountain. To top it all off, Biola awarded him an academic scholarship.

In the short period of about two months, Mountain had gone from not knowing where he would be this fall, to joining the Biola family.

“After all of that, and everything I had planned… there is no other place I would want to be,” Mountain said.