Point Loma Nazarene University sports teams have been in the PacWest conference since the 2012-13 season. The Sea Lions have become a top competitor in the years since, with 14 PacWest Championships and 366 All-PacWest selections.
This season, the Sea Lions face a new competitor that joined the PacWest conference at the beginning of the 2023-24 school year. Westmont College is the most recent team to join after all PacWest presidents agreed on inviting them into the conference, making them the first team to join since Biola University in 2016, according to thepacwest.com.
PLNU volleyball and cross-country have both already competed against Westmont College. The volleyball match took all five sets, but the Sea Lions pulled off the win, beating Westmont College 15-8 in the final set.
Head volleyball coach Jonathan Scott said the team kept calm under pressure.
“We stayed in the moment and believed in ourselves,” Scott said.
This win over Westmont College contributed to the volleyball team’s current 10-0 run, but at this point in the season, the Sea Lions start facing teams for the second time.
“I’m sure some teams will try some new things, and we have to be adaptable when that happens,” Scott said. “The second time around definitely brings different challenges, especially if you beat them the first time at home and the second time is at their place.”
The Sea Lions’ next volleyball match will be on Friday, Oct. 27, at 6 p.m. in the Golden Gymnasium as they take on Hawaii Hilo.
On the cross-country side, head coach Landon Bright feels that Westmont College is a team to keep in mind when heading into races.
“They have run a good program at Westmont for a while, so they are a team that will definitely have an impact on the conference,” Bright said. “They are a team we have to consider at the conference meet, so I will be telling our group to keep an eye on them throughout the race.”
According to Bright, he hasn’t raced his top group against them yet, so he is interested to see how they will perform against Westmont College in the conference race.
“I think it could be a close competition, so we will have to put our top five ahead of most of their group,” Bright said.
As Bright is keeping a lookout on Westmont College, he is encouraging his runners to do the same. The Sea Lions will have to place in the top six to move on to the regional meet.
“There are about six or seven teams that are competitive [in the conference], and then it drops off a little bit. They will definitely be one of those programs that is in that top seven group,” Bright said. “We will also have to factor them in once the track season rolls around because they usually have some talented individual runners as well.”
Since the writing of this story, PLNU Cross-Country placed two spots ahead of Westmont College in the PacWest Conference Championship on Oct. 21, landing the Sea Lions in fourth place overall.
