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By Jay Spivey

For the Clemmons Courier

CLEMMONS — The West Forsyth girls lacrosse team won the Central Piedmont 4-A and finished undefeated in the conference in last week’s final week of the regular season with two conference wins and a nonconference win.  

West Forsyth (16-1, 12-0) upended Reynolds, Cornelius Hough and East Forsyth last week.  West Forsyth will be the No. 1 seed for this week’s conference tournament and received a first-round bye. 

“I think we’re the team to beat,” Coach Doug Brawley of the Titans said. “Now, once again, we’re going to have to make sure our girls stay focused, realize the importance of this, not only from a local-pride standpoint, beating Reynolds three times in one year, which is going to be next to impossible.  

“It’s going to be very difficult, but also stay focused in preparing for the state playoffs (which start next week).” 

The first round of the conference tournament began on Monday with the first round being at the sites of the higher seeds. Since Parkland doesn’t have a team, there are only seven teams and West Forsyth received a first-round bye. The semifinals and championship will be at West Forsyth.  

In the semifinals, West Forsyth will play Tuesday at 5:30 against the winner of Monday’s game between No. 5 Davie County at No. 4 East Forsyth. In the other two quarterfinal games, No. 6 Mount Tabor was at No. 3 Reagan and No. 7 Glenn was at No. 2 Reynolds. Those quarterfinals winners will play in Wednesday’s semifinal at 5:30. The girls championship is at 5:30 on Thursday. 

That’s why beating Reynolds, Hough and East Forsyth a combined 49-23 was so important. 

“It is an excellent opportunity just to let your guard down, to say that the conference championship is already secured, and you didn’t have to play hard, but the girls did,” Brawley said. “And It’s an opportunity that everybody on the team got to play in the game and help prepare people for the future. But it also prepares us for this week’s conference tournament…” 

Last Tuesday, West Forsyth defeated Reynolds 12-6 at home with four goals apiece from Bailey Fox and Tatum Snow. Alivia Gurley added three goals. 

Reynolds is 10-4 and 10-2. 

In the nonconference game at Hough last Wednesday, West Forsyth won 17-11 after three players – Gurley, Fox, Brigdhe Mullen and – each scored four goals. Gaby Vestal added three goals. 

Hough is 6-4 overall. 

In the regular-season finale last Friday at East Forsyth, Snow scored seven goals to help West Forsyth to a 20-6 win. Gurley and Vestal added four goals apiece. 

West Forsyth led 15-4 at halftime. 

East Forsyth is 7-9 overall and 6-6 in the conference. 

“We had a really good week,” Brawley said. “We wrapped up the regular season.” 

Girls soccer 

The West Forsyth girls soccer team remained undefeated in the Central Piedmont 4-A last week with wins against Reynolds and Mount Tabor. 

West Forsyth (9-2-1, 8-0) won both games 2-1 to remain in first place in the conference. 

“Tough week. Two really good teams. And both games we sort of have had to battle and we had our lead and we had to hold onto it,” Coach Jeffrey Williams of the Titans said. “So, I think it was great I think for us as a team to have that competition and to work on a few things that we need to work on in tight games.” 

Last Monday at Reynolds, Milly Garcia Olmedo scored both goals. 

“She’s great,” Williams said. “She’s one of the favorites on the team as far as attitude, personality, does whatever’s asked of her, Infectious personality, loves the game of soccer, is a great teammate, loves being a teammate. She’s a hard worker. You can’t say enough good things about her.” 

As of Monday, Reynolds is 6-5-1 overall and 3-4-1 in the conference. 

At Mount Tabor last Wednesday, Aislynn Maguire scored two second-half goals to help West Forsyth come from behind to win. 

“We were able to convert a penalty (kick) and were able to convert a through ball, sort of an easy goal for us and luckily held on,” Williams said.  

Mount Tabor, as of Monday, is 9-4-1 overall and 5-3 in the conference. 

This week, West Forsyth played host to Parkland (1-12, 0-8) on Monday in a conference game, was scheduled to play at North Davidson (11-1) in a nonconference game on Tuesday, and was scheduled to play at Glenn (4-8-1, 2-6) Wednesday in a conference game. 

“We hope to keep the ball rolling no matter who we play,” Williams said. “And try to keep the standard of play, that we don’t create bad habits and we don’t deviate from.”  

Baseball 

It was a seesaw week last week for the West Forsyth baseball team. 

West Forsyth defeated Mount Tabor 21-0 last Tuesday at home in a Central Piedmont 4-A game, lost 9-8 in eight innings against Watauga in Boone the next night in a nonconference game, and defeated Mount Tabor 9-2 last Friday on the road. 

In the first Mount Tabor game, West Forsyth scored four runs in the first inning, 12 in the second and five in the third. 

On Wednesday in Boone, West Forsyth led 8-5, but Watauga (11-5) scored three runs in the sixth to tie it and scored in the eighth to win 9-8 in extra innings. 

“The bottom line, like I said after the game to our kids, is late in the ballgame they executed, and we didn’t,” said Kevin McIntosh of West Forsyth (15-5, 10-2). 

In the second Mount Tabor game, West Forsyth scored five runs in the second inning, two in the fourth, and one run each in the sixth and seventh. 

“You still had to take care of business in the conference,” McIntosh said. “The Tuesday night game was 21-0 and got out of hand early. And then we went to Watauga on Wednesday, and it was just staying focused against a conference opponent. And right now, you can’t afford to drop anything. And our guys were focused, and took care of business, did what we had to do and came away with a 9-2 victory on Friday night.” 

This week is the final week of the regular season. West Forsyth traveled to Toast on Monday to face North Surry (11-7) in a nonconference game. West Forsyth is also scheduled to play host to East Forsyth (13-7, 8-4) on Tuesday, and it’s scheduled to travel to Kernersville on Friday to face East Forsyth in the rematch. 

West Forsyth is currently in second place in the conference, just behind Reagan (16-3, 11-1). 

“East is playing for a lot right now,” McIntosh said. “You know, the last couple years, West has been able to kind of knock them off the last week and kind of take the outright conference championships from them.” 

Softball 

The West Forsyth softball team had the outright lead in the Central Piedmont 4-A before it headed to Reagan last Tuesday night. 

However, Reagan won 5-4, and because Reagan, which was in second place, swept the season series, Reagan has overtaken West Forsyth for first place with just this week left in the regular season. 

“We had the 4-1 lead and all the momentum, and kicked a couple balls around, which we typically don’t do,” Coach Kevin Baity of the Titans said. “We made a couple errors and gave them the momentum back and didn’t get some timely hits, and had a few bad breaks, and the next thing you know, all the momentum’s their way. They scored two in the fifth and two in the sixth to take a lead.” 

Reagan is now 15-3 overall and 11-2 in the conference. West Forsyth is 16-3 and 9-2. 

West Forsyth bounced back and defeated Forbush 6-0 at home in a nonconference game last Wednesday. And last Friday night, West Forsyth defeated Davie County 12-6 in a conference game in Clemmons. 

Forbush is 12-8 and Davie County, as of Monday, is 15-6 overall and 10-3 in the conference. 

“We played two great games,” Baity said. “Forbush helped us a lot because Forbush was good. You know, we hit them well. They’ve got a very good pitcher. We hit her well. And then of course (Friday) night against Davie, Davie’s got one of the top pitchers in the conference and we knocked her off the mound in the second inning.” 

West Forsyth played host to East Wilkes (17-2) Monday in a nonconference game, was scheduled to play host to Reynolds (3-11, 2-10) in a conference doubleheader on Tuesday and is scheduled to travel to Kernersville on Friday to play East Forsyth (11-9, 8-4) in the final game of the regular season. 

“Reagan lost to Davie and Reagan lost to East,” Baity said. “I don’t know. I truly feel like that we could win the conference tournament. I think we would be favored to. The most difficult part is that we’re having to play both of them.” 

Boys lacrosse

The West Forsyth boys lacrosse team finished its regular season this past week with a nonconference loss to Atkins and two Central Piedmont 4-A losses to Reynolds and East Forsyth.  

The Titans finished the regular season 0-15 overall and 0-12 in the conference. They were also outscored 215-70.  

Against Atkins at home last Monday, West Forsyth lost 11-4. 

Atkins is now 12-6 overall. 

The next night, at home against Reynolds (12-2, 11-1), which is the top seed in the conference, West Forsyth lost 16-5.  

Playing against East Forsyth this past Friday in Kernersville, West Forsyth closed the regular season by losing 13-1. 

The Eagles (12-5, 8-4) scored six goals in the first quarter and led 7-1 at halftime.  

The conference tournament started on Monday at the sites of the higher seeds and the semifinals and final will be at West Forsyth. Since Parkland doesn’t have a boys lacrosse team, West Forsyth finished in seventh, which is last place, and was scheduled to have played at No. 2 Reagan (11-6, 10-2). 

Reynolds received a first-round bye and will play in Tuesday’s semifinal against the winner of Monday’s first-round game between No. 5 Glenn at No. 4 Davie County. 

The winner of the West Forsyth-Reagan game will play Wednesday at West Forsyth against the winner of Monday’s first-round game between No. 6 Mount Tabor against No. 3 East Forsyth.  

The championship is scheduled for 7:15 on Thursday at West Forsyth.