Westminster Girls Basketball Coach Gets a Birthday Win

''A good birthday present. I'll take it,'' said Westminster Coach Shawn Minnier after the game as people were wishing him happy birthday.

The Owls, with 17 points from senior Bethany Baer, knocked off county foe, the Century Knights 45-28.

Westminster improved to 3-2 overall and 2-1 in the county. The Knights fell to 1-4 and 0-3 in the county.

Century Coach Joel Beard summed up the game and the early season in three words after the game, ''We can't score.''

Westminster sophomore Danielle Fieni scored a three-pointer, 10 seconds into the game and the Owls never trailed. The visitors were up 9-5 at the end of the first quarter and took a nine point lead into the locker room at half time.

The Knights came out and scored five points to close the gap to four points, 20-16. The Owls answered with four points and Century was able to get the margin down to four again with 3:22 left in the third quarter.

Baer kept the Knights from coming back in the final period, as she pumped in 10 of her 17 points in the final eight minutes.

Westminster was able to keep Century's Alice Mercer from scoring in double figures. Mercer netted five points in the contest.

''We knew going in that she was going to be one of their go-to players and a matter of putting our best defensive player against their best offensive player and see who comes out victorious in that match up. I think we did it for the most part. We did a pretty good job of containing her and our help side defense did a good job of sliding over and helping when our girl did get beat. It was a good team effort in the sense of trying to stop someone like that. She is a great ball player,'' said Minnier.

Mercer's teammate Haley Bordner topped the Knights with 14 points. Also scoring for Century was Cassidy Jones and Angela Flister with three points each. Jamie Clark, Victoria Perrone and Brooke Snyder each had one point.

Besides Baer, seniors Alyssa Semones and Jane Sussman scored in double figures. Semones threw in 12 points and Sussman had 11. Sara Demetrakia and Fieni had three points each and Jessica Carder two to round out scoring for the Owls.

''They played good defense, but we didn't finish enough. We broke down our execution. Defensively We went down eight, 10 times down the court and didn't score. Until we figure out a way to execute better, we are always going to have that kind of game. We're not terrible. We're struggling right now. We are going to have to do a better job offensively,'' said Beard.

Westminster also won the junior varsity game, 47-37.