The reintroduction of the inter-county rivalry between West Johnston and South Johnston has been a great success for the Wildcats. Both the Lady Wildcats and the men’s team took two victories from the series.

The two neighboring schools will always be tied together as they share boundaries and students. As West has swelled to a 4A school over the past eight years, South has become one of the smaller 3A schools in the area. West will look to South for a model of what to expect next year as they experience a dip in enrollment due to the opening of Cleveland High School.

On Tuesday night, South visited West for the second of a two game series. Both, the girls and boys’ West Johnston teams beat the Trojans in the first game and took the second one at home as well.

“I think the reason we had success against South was we gave them match up problems,” said the girls’ coach William Pepicello.

The Lady Wildcats brought their record to 3-2 with the win. The Cats finished with 47 points to defeat the Trojans 47-40. Kassidy Burr led the scoring with 14 points and Jessica Parker added 12.

On the men’s side, West took out to an early lead in the first quarter, 20-7, and never looked back. Ben Jacobs scored 14,

Mark Parker scored 13

and CJ Frederick added 10. D. Bledsoe led the scoring for South, catching fire from the three-point line and finishing with 25 points.

David Dewey has been coaching for over a decade and his fiery coaching style and aggressive, hard working Trojan teams have become a staple at South Johnston. South has also brought back a former Trojan standout, Rhonda Langdon, to coach their women’s team. Meanwhile, West has had less coaching stability in its young career until recently. Coach Kris Bennett has coached at West since the second year of the school’s existence, first as an assistant for the men’s team, then as the girl’s varsity coach, and now as the men’s varsity coach. Pepicello has been coaching at the school for three years and has assumed the reigns of the women’s program.

“The boys have played well and are working hard to learn a new philosophy on both offense and defense,” said Coach Kris Bennett. “We have shown some flashes of great basketball but have had trouble maintaining the high level of basketball that it will take to be competitive in our conference.”

West struggled Friday night as both teams fell to Garner in their first GNRC game. West will be in action again on Friday at East Wake.