Westmont Magazine Westmont Wins the GSAC All-Sports Award

For the first time in two decades, Westmont has won the All-Sports Award for the Golden State Athletic Conference, given to the institution with the highest average finish in the conference standings in all its sports. Four Warrior teams won conference titles: women’s basketball (with a perfect GSAC season), men’s basketball, men’s track and field, and women’s tennis. Nine of Westmont’s 12 teams finished in the top three: both cross country teams, both basketball teams, both track and field teams, both tennis teams, and women’s soccer. The women’s tennis team earned the highest average grade point average (3.33), followed by men’s cross country (3.28), women’s soccer (3.23), and women’s cross country (3.21).

Westmont has claimed the GSAC award eight times. Schools in the conference earn points based on the final, regular season standings in each sport.

“Athletic competition is one of the ways we demonstrate the overall quality of our institution,” says Dave Odell, Westmont’s athletic director. “Winning the GSAC All-Sports Award demonstrates that we’re beginning to represent the institution at a level it deserves to be represented. When I became athletic director a little more than four years ago, I asked the incoming class (now recently graduated) to join me in a group effort of taking athletics to a new level. That group caught the vision. We won 41 percent of our contests the year before they came to Westmont. This year we won almost 70 percent of our contests.”

Odell also gives credit to the people who support Warrior athletics. “I asked them to step up, and they did,” he says. “As a result, we were able to invest their gifts in scholarships. I think we have room for additional growth and that we can battle not only for the GSAC All-Sports Award but for the NAIA Director’s Cup.”