On Nov. 14 the winter sports kickoff was held in the auditorium at 6:30 p.m.. The night started off with Athletic Director Kevin Petersen handing out the fall sports awards.

Petersen congratulated senior Kameron Morgan for his performance at the state cross country meet, as well as congratulating head cross country Coach Marty Leal for winning coach of the year for the second year in a row.

“It is a good honor to have, but it is all in the kids. The kids do the work, I just manage them, so it makes it easy when they listen to me and believe in the program,” Leal said.

Football, volleyball, golf, cross country and girls swimming athletes were all presented awards based on their academic performance during their season. After the fall awards, all of the winter sports teams were introduced.

Many winter sports are starting the year off with new coaches. Boys head basketball coach David Robinson taking over for retiree Mark Bigler, and Chris Carr will now take on the role of assistant coach.

“I hope to see fun, energetic, uptempo kind of games. Bigler did a great job but we hope to change things as far as pushing the ball up the floor and getting everyone involved,” Carr said. “Practices are going to be a lot of running, conditioning and hard work.”

Unlike basketball, wrestling has been coached by Jim Weisrock for the last five years at West.

“I hoping to see improvement, the first year I was coach we had a few guys qualify for state and last years we had a few guys on the verge of going, I think this year we will get over the hump again,” Weisrock said. “We try to talk about improving every week and it will all work out in the long run.”

Weisrock believes that the winter kick off is a good event to get the school excited about the winter sports season. Petersen hopes the winter kick off informs parents about the sports their kids take part in.

“I like to have my parent meetings all on the same night, that way I can pop my head in and make sure the parents are well informed about schedules and policies so that they are already to go for the season,” Petersen said.

Petersen also believes that this is an important night to honor West’s athletes’ seasonal performances.

“I feel we don’t get recognized enough by the public and the other thing is if their kids plays a sport, they really only know about that sport, so it is good for them to see some other kids in school and their achievements,” Petersen said.