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By Jay Spivey

For the Clemmons Courier

The West Forsyth girls soccer team went undefeated in Central Piedmont 4-A play, clinched the conference championship and still has two conference games to play.

That means West Forsyth will be the top seed from the conference in the upcoming NCHSAA Class 4-A playoffs.

West Forsyth (14-3-1, 12-0) defeated Davie County and Reynolds this past week, and with two games remaining this week, it leads second-place East Forsyth (12-4-2, 9-2-1) and third-place Mount Tabor (14-3-2, 7-3-2).

Aislynn Maguire scored the lone goal to help West Forsyth defeat Reynolds 1-0 on Thursday at the Bolton Soccer Complex to officially clinch the conference championship. The game was originally scheduled for last Wednesday, but was moved to Thursday because of inclement weather.

“Potentially being the last soccer game at Bolton, and Reynolds is playing to get into the (NCHSAA Class 4-A) and have a good seed, and it being their last game and everybody knowing each other, and it being a delay from Wednesday, obviously you know it’s going to be a good game,” West Forsyth Coach Jeffrey Williams said. “So, yeah, we had a couple really good opportunities the first half that bounced and hit the post or bounced wide, made it more interesting for the second half. It was good we were in a game like that.” 

Reynolds is 8-7-2 and 5-5-2 in the conference.

According to Williams, Maguire scored in the 64th minute.  

“(Reynolds) had one threat (after Maguire’s goal),” Williams said. “We had a ball kicked long and a couple of our defenders were questioning who should get it. And no one stepped forward and it bounced. It bounced again, and there was a coming together of like our keeper and two of our players and one of their players. And the ball squirts through and was headed towards the goal and we had a goal-line clearance.” 

Last Monday in Mocksville, West Forsyth defeated Davie County 5-0 with five goals from five different players — Leigha Curry, Ella Fergus, Allie Ramseur, Reese Williams and Aubrey Luecht. 

Davie County is 10-4-3 overall and 6-4-2 in the conference. 

“We were up for it,” Williams said. “We knew their players from the first time. We were ready to go and we were moving the ball pretty good. We had a good rotation of players coming in and out in the first and second half.” 

West Forsyth was scheduled to play East Forsyth in Clemmons on Monday. West Forsyth defeated East Forsyth 3-2 in overtime on April 22 in Kernersville.

In addition, the regular season will conclude on Wednesday with a game at Mount Tabor. West Forsyth defeated Mount Tabor 3-0 in the first meeting on April 9 in Clemmons.

“We’ve got the second and third teams in the conference to go,” Williams said. “It’s senior night on Monday, all ready to go for that one and hopefully send out our two seniors on their final regular-season home game in style.

“Then with Tabor, they’re a good team, and we’re sort of seeing this as a playoff run.” 

The NCHSAA is scheduled to announce on Friday the pairings for the state playoffs. The first round is scheduled for Monday, May 12, and the second round is scheduled for Thursday, May 15.

Girls lacrosse

The West Forsyth girls soccer team wasn’t the only team from the school that won a regular-season conference championship this past week. The girls lacrosse team won the conference regular-season championship this past week and swept all three conference games played.

Winning the regular-season championship means that West Forsyth (18-5, 12-0) will be the top seed for the NCHSAA Class 4-A tournament next week. The pairings for the state tournament will be announced on Friday. The first round of the state tournament is scheduled for Tuesday, May 13, and the second round is scheduled for Friday, May 16.

West Forsyth clinched at least a tie for the conference title last Tuesday after traveling to Reynolds (11-9, 9-3) and winning 20-8 with the help of seven goals from Kendall Gurley and six goals from Tatum Snow.

“Reynolds is always one of our biggest rivals,” Titans Coach Doug Brawley said. “And we played them close earlier in the year. And I was glad to see our girls come out with such a vengeance.”

West Forsyth led Reynolds 8-4 at halftime.

“We were definitely celebrating the victory over Reynolds regardless of if it meant a championship or not,” Brawley said. “We also knew that we were in the driver’s seat for our remaining two games.” 

Reynolds defeated Reagan 20-17 Friday night in the regular-season finale. Reagan finished 14-5 overall and 9-3 in the conference, meaning West Forsyth won the conference by three games over Reynolds and Reagan.  

“The girls played great. They stayed fired up and stayed focused the whole night,” Brawley said of defeating Reynolds. “It was a great win, a great week.” 

West Forsyth followed up the win against Reynolds by pummeling Davie County 22-6 Thursday night in Mocksville.

West Forsyth led 14-4 at halftime, and Gabby Vestal and Brigdhe Mullen led the team with four goals apiece.

And on Friday night, West Forsyth closed the regular season after Vestal scored three goals to help defeat East Forsyth 16-3.

“We were able to play a lot of subs, get everybody in the game,” Brawley said. “A lot of new players got playing time in both of those games, and we anticipate having that happen on Tuesday night also.”

Since Parkland doesn’t have a girls lacrosse team, there are only seven teams that play in the conference. Therefore, West Forsyth received a first-round bye for this week’s conference tournament. West Forsyth was scheduled to play Tuesday at 5:30 at Bolton against the winner No. 5 East Forsyth against No. 4 Davie County, scheduled for Monday.  

In Monday’s other first-round games, No. 6 Mount Tabor will play No. 3 Reynolds at 7 p.m. at Bolton, and No. 7 Glenn will face No. 2 Reagan at 5:30 on Monday. The championship is scheduled for 5:30 on Thursday at Bolton.

“For us the most important thing is beating Reynolds and Reagan again,” Brawley said. “One step at a time. We don’t want to give them bragging rights for the rest of the year.” 

Softball 

The top-seeded West Forsyth softball team reached the championship of the conference tournament, but it lost to Reagan in the championship.

After going undefeated in the conference and winning the first two games of the conference tournament, second-seeded Reagan defeated West Forsyth 4-3 Thursday night in the tournament championship. 

“We didn’t hit very well,” West Forsyth Coach Kevin Baity said. “When we did hit hard it seemed to be right at them. But we just made a couple of errors, and that has been the tendency against Reagan, even though we haven’t lost to them yet until last night. I don’t think they had an earned run. I know they didn’t have an earned run last night.” 

Sydney Horton led off with a triple and scored on a sacrifice fly by Lilliana Parker. The Titans added two more runs in the second inning to make it 3-0. The Raiders scored their first run in the third to trim the lead to 3-1 before scoring three runs in the fifth inning to take a 4-3 lead. 

“We’ve just got to clean up from making mistakes, making errors, because in the playoffs you make one or two errors, that’s the ballgame,” Baity said.  

West Forsyth is still the top seed from the conference for the state tournament, which was announced on Monday. West Forsyth is the No. 3 seed in the west and is scheduled to play No. 30 Southwest Guilford in Clemmons on Tuesday in the first round of the playoffs. If it were to win, it would play host to the winner of Tuesday’s other first-round game between No. 19 South Iredell at No. 14 Waxhaw Cuthbertson in the second round on Friday.   

“Obviously it did not affect our seeding at all,” Baity said. “You know we got some momentum against East Forsyth in the semis. I think the biggest concern is the continuous inconsistency of the defense giving up runs.” 

In the first round of the conference tournament in Clemmons last Monday, top-West Forsyth routed eighth-seeded Reynolds 15-0. The next night in the semifinals, they upended No. 4 East Forsyth 8-2. 

“We should be able to beat most teams scoring three or four runs,” Baity said. “With our pitching, and what should be our experience on defense, and we should be to score that on everybody. We’re not going to see any better pitching than we saw (Thursday) night (against Reagan).” 

Baseball 

Much like the West Forsyth softball team, the baseball team went into the conference tournament as the top seed.  

However, after cruising past eighth-seeded Parkland 15-0 in the first round last Monday in the first round of the tournament in Clemmons, No. 4-seeded Davie County upset West Forsyth 3-2 in the semifinals last Tuesday at Reagan.

“Even in the Davie game, the difference in the game was we left 13 guys on base, which is really impressive to do in a seven-inning ballgame,” Titans Coach Kevin McIntosh said. “Davie executed on a sac fly, and a couple of other things that we didn’t do, they did. It was just one of those nights that everything went their way. 

“You’ve got to give them credit that they came in with a gameplan and they executed it.” 

The Titans (20-4) finished undefeated in their regular-season conference games.

“It was just one of those things too where I just felt like sooner or later in the sixth or seventh inning when we had runners on that we’re going to come through with a hit and the Titans are going to prevail,” said McIntosh. “It just didn’t happen.  

“I never felt like we panicked. I never felt like we were in trouble. We just didn’t execute when we needed to and unfortunately it was on the short end of the stick.” 

Second-seeded Reagan defeated Davie County 9-0 in the championship. Reagan is 21-4 and Davie is 14-13.  

The NCHSAA announced pairings on Monday afternoon for the state tournament. West Forsyth is the top seed from the Central Piedmont 4-A as the No. 5 seed in the west and is scheduled to play Tuesday against No. 28 Charlotte Ardrey Kell in the first round in Clemmons. The winner of that game will play the winner of No. 21 Harrisburg Hickory Ridge at No. 12 Reagan, and the second round must be played by Friday.

“Looking back at it, we had three good days of practice, and we’ll have another good practice on Monday,” McIntosh said. “Our mindsets I feel like are in the right place.” 

Boys lacrosse

The West Forsyth boys lacrosse team closed out the regular season with three straight Central Piedmont 4-A losses last week. 

Tuesday on the road, Reynolds defeated West Forsyth 15-3. Milo Lester, Isaac Williams and Jace Isler scored the three goals for West Forsyth (11-8, 5-7). 

Reynolds won the regular-season conference championship after finishing 17-2 overall and 12-0 in the conference. 

In Mocksville last Thursday, Davie County defeated West Forsyth 15-6 with the help of four goals by Jack Pisciotta. Davie led 3-0 after the first quarter and 7-1 at halftime.  

Davie finished the regular season 16-2. 

And this past Friday in Clemmons, Drew Macy scored four goals as East Forsyth edged West Forsyth 9-8 in the regular-season finale for both teams. 

East Forsyth finished 5-12 overall and 3-9 in the conference.  

West Forsyth finished fourth in the conference and is scheduled to play No. 5 Mount Tabor (4-12) Monday in Clemmons. The winner of that game will play No. 1 Reynolds, which received a first-round bye, in Tuesday’s semifinals at Bolton. The championship is scheduled for Thursday night at Bolton.

The NCHSAA is scheduled to release playoffs pairings on Friday for next week’s Class 4-A playoffs. The first round is scheduled for Tuesday, May 13 and the second round is scheduled for Friday, May 16.