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Westwood Middle School’s boys’ and girls’ basketball teams got the 2025-26 season started the right way Tuesday evening.

Hosting Liberty for a doubleheader, both the Rockets and Lady Rockets came out on top in their respective matchups. The girls got it started with a 28-18 come-from-behind victory. The boys’ team followed this up with a 75-13 routing in the nightcap.

Westwood (1-0 girls, boys) will remain at home to face Franklin North Thursday. The girls’ game will start things off and begin at 6 p.m.

Lady Rockets break off in fourth quarter

After a close contest through much of its season opener against Liberty, Westwood was able to separate itself late on the way to winning by 10 Tuesday evening.

“I liked very much that after halftime we came in and executed what we worked on all summer long. Those first-game jitters I think really got to us in the first half. We had a lot of girls overly excited, overly aggressive, overly handsy, so we got a lot of silly fouls in that first half and I had to sit some of my more key players,” Westwood coach Lora Selvog said. “But all of the girls stepped up, that’s beautiful. When the key players are out, we had great kids step up and play hard, so second half, super proud of them executing what we work on in practice.”

Down 5-4 after the first quarter, the Lady Rockets took a narrow lead in the second quarter to hold a 10-9 advantage at halftime. Liberty was able to retake control early in the third quarter, at one point leading 16-12. A 3-pointer from Paisley Prater cut the Liberty lead to one, before Bella Hastings knocked down a shot of her own to put Westwood up 17-16. Hastings followed this up with a pair of free throws to put the Lady Rockets up 19-16 after three quarters.

In the fourth quarter, Westwood was able to outscore Liberty 9-2 to break away and seal the season-opening victory.

“We have a very young team. We only have two eighth graders, so I hope that their communication gets a little bit better and their ability to help on defense when it’s not necessarily their girl,” Selvog said. “I just feel like they did a really great job of stopping their (Liberty’s) best scorer. I think she had all their points at halftime and she ended up fouling out of the game, so I was super proud of that, but we need to work on that communication and defense.”

Prater, Makenzie Meacham and Bella Hastings all had six points each for the Lady Rockets. Camryn Lowe and Adley Selvog both followed with four points each. Ashlyn Allen and Lyza Cashion both had one free throw to finish with one point each.

Rockets dominate Liberty

Westwood wasted no time jumping ahead once the boys’ game got under way Tuesday night, quickly building a double-digit lead and ultimately holding Liberty to 13 points across all four quarters.

“We’ve been working on some new plays and we’ve been working on things. They said they were nervous, but I said just get out there and play ball and have a good time,” Westwood coach Anita Gannon said. “Their offense came together well and mostly their defense. We’ve been working on our defense and talking and talking to each other, letting everybody know where their defender is.”

After Liberty took an early 3-0 lead, the Rockets took control on a pair of shots from Brock Christian and never looked back on the way to finishing the first quarter up 22-7.

Westwood continued to separate itself as the game continued. After taking a 32-10 lead into halftime, the Rockets pushed further ahead to make it a 61-13 game after three quarters. Westwood went on to hold Liberty scoreless in the fourth quarter while adding another 14 points before the game’s conclusion.

“We played a lot of our kids in different positions. On our varsity, we have a sixth grader and two seventh graders, and of course the rest are eighth graders. We put them in some different positions tonight because we were in foul trouble,” Gannon said. “We were telling them hands off, you can’t stand up straight. Just the little things that we need to fix to be an all-around better ball team.”

Christian led the Rockets’ offense with 16 points. Luke Christian followed with 14 points. Up next was Hayes Shemwell with 12 points. Kayden Campbell added 10 points to finish just ahead of Alijah Cuff with nine points. Sterling Hackett came away with five points. Malachi Duke hit a single trey for 3 points. Abe Norman, Louis Nowitzki and Kawl Saine all had two points each to round out the scoring.