Eric Knopsnyder | Life is good on the Hilltop

It’s a wonderful time to be a Hilltopper. Everything is going well for the Westmont Hilltop athletic teams.

Coach Matt Beaujon’s wrestlers brought home gold and bronze medals from the PIAA tournament, which helped Westmont finish seventh in the team standings.

The boys basketball team is 29-0 and enters the second round of the PIAA playoffs ranked eighth in the state in Class AA.

The girls basketball team, which has been the state runner-up the past two years, has hit its stride of late, winning 15 of its past 16 games, including a 42-point rout of Washington in the first round of the Class AA playoffs. The Hilloppers now are ranked fifth in the state.

“My A.D. looks like a genius,” Beaujon said with a laugh after Zac Bennett captured the 189-pound title at the Giant Center in Hershey on Saturday.

Maybe. But Colleen Goerlich, Westmont’s athletic director, isn’t about to claim any of the credit for the success of the winter sports teams.

“It’s exciting, but I don’t have anything to do with it,” she said. “It’s the kids who do all the work. I just make sure the buses are going to the right places.”

The school’s swimming and ice hockey teams are also still in action, with several swimmers headed to this weekend’s state meet at Bucknell and Art McQuillan’s hockey players set to play Freeport on Wednesday night in the first round of the PIHL playoffs.

The wrestling team is Westmont’s only winter sport that is completely done for the year.

And what a year it was.

Beaujon’s squad won the District 6 team title and advanced to Hershey for the PIAA Team Championships, where it won its first match before dropping two straight.

Then the Hilltoppers won the District 6 individual wrestling tournament title and finished second in the Southwest Regional tournament.

Bennett captured the 189-pound titles in each tournament before moving on to Hershey, where the sophomore looked as dominant on the mat as he does unimposing off of it.

Trevor Kushner, a 103-pound sophomore from Westmont, also brought a medal home from Hershey, as he finished third.

Both basketball teams also won District 6 titles.

The winter of content has generated a lot of enthusiasm in the school district.

“It’s very exciting,” said Beaujon, a Westmont graduate who won the school’s only other gold in wrestling 16 years ago. “It’s kind of humbling when you open up the local paper and you see Westmont coverage all over the sports page.”

Bennett said there’s a certain buzz in the Hilltop hallways.

“There’s a lot of school spirit for our sports, a lot of hype for our teams,” he said. “Everyone’s real happy at Westmont right now with all the success.”

Especially Goerlich. But that has more to do with how they act than how well they perform.

“I’m just proud to be the athletic director because our kids show such class on and off the court,” she said.



Eric Knopsnyder is the sports editor of The Tribune-Democrat.