Westside’s last state tournament appearance came in 2020. Since then even regional berths have been difficult to obtain.
With a group of seniors who have played a lot of basketball for him, Westside head coach Darren Thomas is hoping the Renegades can make another run to Charleston after falling in the regional round last year.
“We have three returning seniors who’ve been four-year starters for us,” Thomas said. “Kaitlyn Lester, she averaged about 10 points a game for us last year and so far through two games this year she’s averaging about 15 points a game and 10 rebounds. Kenzie Morgan is back at point guard for us and she’s a three year starter who really started a lot when she was a freshman. She’s a really good athlete, and runs a floor well. The first two games this year, she’s improved a lot since last year. She’s pretty well settled into the point guard position for us and runs our team. Daisha Cline is our other senior. Daisha is one of our top rebounders and tough as nails. She does the dirty work – she’ll rebound and set screens.
“The other kid who played a lot for us last year is back is Rylee Brown. She’s a sophomore and averaged about eight points a game for us last year as a freshman. They’ve really improved a lot since last year and we ended up I think with 13 wins. That was coming off a five-win season. So we really improved a lot last year, and we’re hoping to get similar results but we’re better this year. Five of my top nine right now are freshmen. So, hey, we’re gonna be learning as we go too.”
With an experienced mix returning Thomas has high hopes and he’s already noticed a change in his group. They’re handling adversity well when it strikes, something that was missing a year ago.
“Last year, there were games where we just got down and we quit,” Thomas said. “So far in practice, the scrimmage and the first couple of games we played hard. That’s one thing that we stress from day one – things aren’t always going to go your way but we need to play hard every minute of every game. If you do that every game you’ll never hear me complain and it will make us better down the road. And so far, you know, I’m pleased with the effort, but we have to get a lot better on just the little things. We’ve got to rebound better and the last couple of years we’ve just had trouble scoring. We don’t have an outside threat right now. Kyndal (Lusk)l was with us last year and she transferred (Wyoming) East. So that was 10 points a game for us, but I think we’re gonna try a lot more defenses this year. We’re trying to run a little more to give us some easy baskets off the press and hopefully the outside shooting will come along.”
The Renegades will have to wade through a challenging region if they want to get to Charleston. Lewis County and Sissonville were state tournament teams a year ago with Midland Trail and PikeView currently in the mix as well this year.
“We’re setting our goals for this year to get to the sectional championship, and go from there,” Thomas said. Â “You know, these young kids and my three returning seniors want to get better. We know right now with these young kids that there’s going to be games that we’re gonna rely on them. Â We’re gonna turn around and look terrible. I mean, when that many freshmen are in your rotation, we’re still talking about freshmen. We have a couple tough tests early. We just want to get better each week. We want to get better fundamentally and we’ve got a long way to go. But I swear I think by the end of the year, we could be a pretty decent team.”
