Westminster campus briefs

CROSS COUNTRY: The Griffins will travel to Costa Mesa, Calif., for the Vanguard Invitational. The race is on Saturday and will be held at Fairview Park. The men's race will be 8K in length while the women's race is a 5K.

Westminster is coming off the Bob Firman Invitational where both teams finished in fourth place. The men posted 92 points with an average time of 28:05 over the 8K course. Andrew Archer paced the Griffins with a 16th-place finish and completed the race in 26:57. The women's team finished fourth with 114 points and an average time of 21:26 over the 5K course. Katrina England led the Griffins with a 40th-place finish with her time of 21:04.

The Westminster men's cross country team heads to the third event of the schedule after taking one week off. Archer is coming off his best performance with a 16th-place result. Oliver Lange finished 25th at the Bob Firman race to rank second among the Griffins after leading them at the season opener. Jef Marsicola was 29th in the last outing while Tyler Gregg and David Sondrup also posted personal best times in an 8K race.

The women's team is off to California after placing fourth in Boise and then taking a week off. England paced Westminster at the Bob Firman with a 40th-place result and was closely followed by Ellie Layman in 42nd. Layman ran a 21:13 over the 5K course and was eight seconds ahead of teammate Chelsea Fraser. Fraser finished 45th overall and third among the Griffins after leading the team at the season opening event. Sarah Martin, Kara Peters, Cassie Mulkey, and Allison Perkins also ran at the Bob Firman Invitational.

MEN'S SOCCER: The team hits the road to Nebraska for two games against ranked opponents this weekend. The Griffins will face 25th-ranked Bellevue on Saturday and then visit No. 4 Hastings on Sunday.

Westminster will head to Nebraska with an 8-4 overall record after a 2-0 win over Rocky Mountain College on October 3. They received one vote in this week's edition of the 2010 NAIA Men's Soccer Coaches' Top 25 poll. The win snapped a three-game losing streak and improved the Griffins to 1-1 in the Frontier Conference.

As a team, Westminster is averaging 1.75 goals per contest while taking 14.1 shots. They have put 80 of those shots on goal and scored on 12.4% of those total shots. The team has also taken 44 corner kicks.

Defensively they allow 1.08 goals per game and hold the opposition to 10.8 shots per game. Griffin opponents have taken 58 corners and are 2-for-2 on penalty kicks.