Westmoreland campus clippings: Saint Vincent adds Samantha Kelly to volleyball staff

Saint Vincent added some local knowledge to its women’s volleyball coaching staff.

Samantha Kelly, a former Penn-Trafford and Westminster volleyball standout, will join the Bearcats as a graduate assistant.

Kelly was a three-time All-Presidents’ Athletic Conference player and racked up 2,293 assists, 101 kills and 120 service points in her career. She led the conference last season with 1,008 assists and 58 aces.

Kelly also is enrolled in SVC’s master of science in curriculum and instruction graduate program.

Track and field

Saint Vincent: Alex Parker was hired as an assistant for the men’s and women’s track and field and cross country teams.

Parker was a graduate assistant with both programs last year at Geneva, his alma mater.

Parker’s duties included composing training plans, overseeing practices and weightlifting and overseeing the coordination of travel.

The Geneva women placed second at the PAC Indoor Championships and the men finished third at the outdoor competition.

A Meadville native, Parker also coached hurdlers at Villa Maria in Erie in 2019. He also was a student assistant with the Geneva women’s basketball team.

Women’s soccer

Robert Morris: Freshman Malia Kearns (Penn-Trafford) started in the opener for the Colonials. She had a pair of shots and played 87 minutes in a 2-0 victory over Virginia Military Institute.

Another freshman, Paloma Swankler (Norwin) also saw time off the bench.

Valparaiso: Senior forward Kylie Dugan (Penn-Trafford) had the game’s lone goal in a 1-0 victory over Youngstown State.

Football

West Virginia: Wide receiver Mike Evans Jr. (Franklin Regional) has not played down yet for the Mountaineers and he won’t in the future. That is because Evans entered the NCAA transfer portal for a second time and will seek a new program just weeks before the start of the college season.

Evans initially transferred from Robert Morris, where he played in just three games, mainly on special teams.

He has three years of eligibility remaining.

Honors

Westminster: Emerging from a pool of 20 finalists, track and field standout Ryan Beard (Franklin Regional) was the winner of the inaugural Division III Commissioner’s Association Men’s Student-Athlete of the Year award.

Beard also was the top student-athlete in Region VII. He was a CoSIDA Academic All-American after completing a three-year, accelerated undergraduate program and posting a 4.0 grade-point average.

Westminster’s Most Outstanding Accounting student and a Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants Outstanding Senior Award winner, Beard also was an Elks National Foundation Legacy Scholarship recipient.

He was one of 10 interns last summer to be selected to the Deloitte National Leadership Conference.

At the NCAA Division III Championships in May, Beard received the NCAA’s Elite 90 award.

On the track, he earned All-America honors with the Titans’ 400-meter relay team after a seventh-place finish at the national finals.

Beard earned All-America honors at this year’s Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championships with a seventh-place finish as a member of 400-meter relay (41.38), the first All-America relay in program history.

Westminster won the PAC team championship in the spring.