Back to school also means back to practice for athletes.

As we all know West has an incredibly supportive and spirited student section, so it’s no surprise that there’s already buzz about the upcoming sports season. From football helmets to leotards, students are gearing up for fall.

Football, one of the most talked about sports at school kicks off their first game September 6. Get ready to pull out your Viking attire and rejoin your fellow classmates in the student section at the SMS stadium in less than two weeks.

“I think our expectations are high, we want to be a better team at the end of the season than the beginning. We would like to win another state championship.” Coach Tim Callaghan said.

With a run, sprint, and a dash, Cross Country is off to a great start with many more miles to go. From after school practices to laps ran alone this dedicated group of students is really going the extra mile.

“This year’s team has already set records in that it’s the largest Cross Country team West has ever fielded, with over 90 runners.  Of those 90, a little over 40 have never participated in this sport before which is both exciting and challenging.  It’s exciting because I think the new runners on the team have a lot of potential, but challenging because they’ve never done this before and don’t know what to expect.  That’s going to require our more experienced runners to step up and be leaders and that’s going to be one of the keys to our success as a team.  What compounds this challenge is that we had a large group of seniors graduate last year who had really been a big part of the heart and soul of this team and definitely the core of our leadership group.  Knowing this was coming, however, we started early last spring casting a vision for the future of this team with the team members who would be returning.  The idea was to embrace the challenges we knew were coming and work to build the kind of future we wanted to live in.  It’s still early, but based on what we’ve seen so far we believe that this year’s team can be as good, and possibly better than last year’s when both boys and girls finished 3^rd at State and we took 2^nd as a team in 5 of the 6 races at League.  That’s the future that we’re working towards each day in practice. ” Coach Jeff Onnen said.

Screams, chants, and goals, were talking about boys soccer. The sound of excitement and cheers fill the air during the West soccer games. Students wait patiently, anticipating the start of the season.

A swing and a miss. No one is currently participating in girls golf, but the coach is eager to change that.

“..beginning level golfers are welcome and I can work with them to develop a lifetime sport” Coach Tim Bishop said.

Starting out the season with a new coach we can expect to see a lot of new and interesting things coming from this years Gymnastics team. The team is filled with incredibly talented students who’s hard work and dedication shows at all times.

Girls Tennis tryouts have just ended and the team is eager to get back into the swing of things. The team has a new assistant coach this year, Matt Dow who will be working with the JV team.

“We only lost a few seniors last year and only one of them was on varsity so we are seasoned team with 2 top players that finished 4^th and 9^th at state last year.  However with that said few of the other schools lost their top players too and there is more competition at the top level.  I would assume we will land in about the same position last year with our league, district and state.” “Varsity will be continuing to develop as we are starting over with doubles partners.  I have never worked with such a great group of girls who are incredibly motivated and rarely complain about the conditioning and demands.” Coach Paige Salveter said.

The hard hitting sport of volleyball is always a topic of discussion. The girls work together well as a team and they look like they genuinely love everything about volleyball.

Attendance to these games can guarantee loads of memories spent with your classmates in our outstanding student section. Bring your friends and family, and try to attend as many games as you can this year. I promise you wont regret it.