SportsThe TOWER 15

BY ANTHONY SPARKSTOWER staff writer

Bethany College has invited some new faces to their already im-pressive athletics program. One of the newest members to the Bison coaching staff is Michael Guinn. Guinn, a former assistant coach at Division II institutions West Vir-ginia Wesleyan College and Seton Hill University, was named the new head of the men’s and women’s cross country teams at Bethany in August.

Guinn was most recently an as-sistant at Seton Hill from 2008 to 2010. In his two seasons, he helped take the Griffins men’s cross coun-try team from fourth place in the WVIAC, West Virginia Intercol-legiate Athletic Conference, to a conference championship. Prior to

his time at Seton Hill, Guinn was the associate head coach for the track and field and cross-country programs at West Virginia Wes-leyan from 2004 to 2008. He had a hand in the Bobcats’ women claim-ing four WVIAC cross country and outdoor track team titles, as well as one men’s cross country and two outdoor track and field champion-ships.

Before his coaching career began, Guinn was just as accomplished as a runner. At Alderson-Broaddus, he was a three-time All-Conference performer in cross country, which included winning the 2001 WVIAC Individual Cross Country cham-pionship. Guinn’s victory helped propel A-B to the conference team title and he also qualified for the NCAA Division II National Cham-

New Coaching Faces at Bethany College

Homecoming Football Game vs. Westminster CollegeSaturday, October 8, 2:00 p.m. at Bison Stadium

Bison Volleyball Makes HistoryBy AMANDA RODABAUGH TOWER staff writer

After remaining undefeated four-teen games into the season, the Bethany College Women’s Volley-ball team was handed their first and only loss by Westminster Col-lege on Friday, Sept. 23rd. The lone loss for the Bison turned out to be the jumpstart they needed to regain their edge. Since their loss they have gone 5-0 and defeated the other two top teams in the PAC, Thomas More and Geneva.

BCVB (19-1, 8-1) faced Thomas More (9-7, 5-2) and Geneva (12-7, 7-1) at a tri-match on Saturday, October 1st. The Bison began the day by defeating the defending con-ference champions, Thomas More, in three sets (25-20, 25-18 and 25-19). It is the first time in program history the team has been able to

overcome the Saints. Bethany finished the day by

notching a win against Geneva. The Golden Tornados took Betha-ny to four sets (18-25, 25-22, 25-16 and 25-18), but the Bison prevailed and handed Geneva their first PAC loss.

Coming off a PAC player of the Week accolade, junior setter Jes-sica Zavatchen totaled 74 assists on the day. Zavatchan moved into the record books earlier in the year, when she broke the school’s career assist record only nine games into her junior season and she continues to add to her total. Senior middle blocker Carrie Talkington contin-ued her spectacular play, notching 25 kills. Senior Tiffany Hoffman led the back row, recording a total of 42 digs.

The Bison will face the only blem-

ish on their season when they play Westminster on Wednesday, Octo-ber 4th, at Hummel Field House.

Junior Taylor Cassidy (left) and senior Carrie Talkington (right) go up for a block in practice. (photo by Annie Wilson)

By ANTHONY SPARKS TOWER staff writer

The Homecoming festivities are at full throttle this week, but Beth-any College’s students and fans always look forward to the football game on Saturday. The match-up will be between the Bethany Bi-son (2-2) overall (1-2) PAC and the Westminster Titans (2-2) overall (1-1) .

On the defensive side of the ball, the Bison weren’t able to hold off the Jackets’ running game as they collected 210 yards. This week, they’ll be trying to focus on halting the running game of junior running back John Proano who has 152 yards on 56 carries with 2 touch-downs this year. Another offensive threat the Bison need to watch out for is senior quarterback Shawn Lehocky. He is a 3-year starter, who in three games has completed 42-76 passes, 424 passing yards, 2 touchdowns and one interception. The defensive needs to shutdown the Titans’ offense, which has not been very impressive this year, only averaging 15 points a game.

The Bison offensive is led by se-nior running back Eric Walker and sophomore quarter Matt Grimard. Walker is coming off a non-Walker-like performance from last week, only gaining 49 yards on 13 car-ries on the ground with 1 reception for 7 yards. However, looking back to last year Walker had a fantas-tic performance against this Titan defense, rushing 33 times for 183 yards and 1 touchdown. Grimard also had a very productive day on the ground and through the air in the same game last season; he had 83 rushing yards on 19 carries and 3 runs into the end zone, also going 10-12 for 204 yards and 2 touch-down passes.

Overall, if either team remem-bers last year’s contest, this will be a high-scoring game, but hopefully for the Bison and coaching staff, they’ll bring home a victory and en-joy their 2011 Homecoming.

2011 Homecoming Football Preview

pionships. After transferring to the University of Charleston, Guinn won back-to-back WVIAC crowns in the 10,000 in 2002 and 2003 while provisionally qualify-ing for NCAA Championships in the event both years. He is the only WVIAC runner in history to be named All-Regional four times.

Although he had a short time until the cross country team’s first meet, held on September 3rd at Westminster, Guinn had two of his runners among the top 20 out of 186 runners. With that, he is excited to take the reins to the program and is looking forward to strengthen the program back to where it was when the men’s team earned the regional championship in 1980.