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It took until the fourth quarter for Westwood football’s offense to start humming, but better late than never.

Taking on Forrest in the Duck River Valley Conference title game, the Rockets overcame a scoreless first three quarters to win 14-12 and win their second straight conference championship. The win also preserved a perfect 9-0 season for Westwood, something the program had not done since 2020.

“Early on, Forrest showed why they’re here and why I considered them by far the best team that we have played all year. They’ve got a lot of pride in that community, a lot of pride in that program and it showed. They had a great game plan, they were well-coached. All credit to them. They came out and they wanted it more than us in the first half,” Westwood coach Matt Mueller said. “We did some soul-searching at halftime. That’s the problem sometimes, when you go undefeated, is you just think everything’s always gonna go your way. Even at Cascade (Sept. 12), it was a feeling more of we could shoot ourselves in the foot, but now it was somebody coming out and just saying no, we want to go toe-to-toe with you and see what you got and they got their answer.”

Forrest jumped out early with a touchdown on the game’s first drive, needing only two plays to reach the end zone less than a minute into the first quarter. A missed 2-point conversion left Westwood down 6-0.

Still trailing by six late in the second quarter, Westwood found itself in a 12-0 hole after another Forrest touchdown with 1:26 left until halftime. Once again, Forrest failed to convert on its 2-point attempt to leave points on the board.

On their next drive, the Rockets finally reached the end zone on a 23-yard pass from Hayes Shemwell to Aidyn Jones. A holding flag on Westwood immediately negated that scoring opportunity and moved the offense back, ultimately leading to the Rockets remaining down by 12 at the break.

Near the end of a scoreless third quarter, Westwood began a possession on the Forrest 28 and proceeded to open the fourth quarter on the 4-yard line. Shemwell connected with Luke Christian two plays into the new quarter to put the Rockets on the board with 7:54 left to play. On the following 2-point conversion attempt, Shemwell once again hit Christian in the end zone to cut the Forrest lead to 12-8.

After forcing Forrest to punt on its next possession, Westwood got the ball back on its own 44-yard line. Down by four and with time of the essence, the Rockets got their drive started with a 49-yard run from Jones to put them on the Forrest seven-yard line.

Two plays later, Shemwell completed a pass to Jones to put Westwood ahead for the first time all game with 1:07 remaining.

“That big run, I just cut outside. Good blocking by Luke (Christian). He had really good blocking. I was able to go outside of him,” Jones said. “On the touchdown, I saw it earlier, it was wide open, so I just caught it again. I got my coach to call it again and I was wide open. Hayes (Shemwell) had good vision and hit me.”

Up 14-12 after the missed 2-point conversion, Westwood now had to deny Forrest any kind of scoring opportunity with just over a minute to play.

Christian ensured Forrest would not get that chance, hauling in a game-sealing interception to bring the Westwood offense back onto the field for victory formation.

“When we played (Forrest) back in week 6, their quarterback overthrew a lot and I was just ready for it,” Christian said of his interception. “I had it cradled up and everything. I knew it was gonna happen.”

Following the game, Christian, Jones, Shemwell, Griffyn Woods and Weston Rodderick were all named to the DRVC All-Conference team. All five were members of an eighth grade class that Mueller said went on a journey to get to the top over the over the last three years.

“They’re such special kids because we go 0-7 their sixth-grade year and they’re all about this tall. They had a very, very rough time. We scored about 36 points the whole year,” Mueller said. “To be able as young people to come back from that and say ‘Yeah, I’m gonna take this out,’ they deserve all the credit that they’re getting and they get all the credit tonight. It wasn’t miracle plays or calls. It was just big-time players stepping up and making plays.”