Last weekend, the Westwood and McNeil lacrosse teams joined forces to participate at the Longhorn Shootout, a pre-season tournament downtown. The varsity team played against four other schools and lacrosse clubs, completely sweeping away their competition. On Saturday, they won against the San Antonio Tacos and the Pivotal Varsity Lacrosse 10-0 and 18-1, respectively. On Sunday, they won against the Rangers Lacrosse team and Anderson 8-1 and 12-0, respectively, winning the tournament.

“It’s always super positive, especially in the pre-season,” Coach Chris Boudoir said. “The atmosphere is very casual, [and] we have been outperforming our competition by a fair margin.”

Westwood and McNeil’s JV lacrosse teams didn’t do as well, losing 8-1 to Lake Travis and 14-2 to Westlake on Saturday. However, they closed off the first day against the Bowie Bulldogs with a 5-3 win. On Sunday, JV lost to 210 Lacrosse Club 7-0.

“Even though we didn’t do that well for the first two games, I think we did well the last game,” JV lacrosse player Richard Xue ‘26 said. “We’re improving, which is important.”

Regardless, Westwood varsity’s final tournament scrimmage against Anderson was a sweep. It also included several players from Westwood’s JV team, testing out the varsity competition waters. Xue was one of them.

“Varsity has much more complicated maneuvers, they activate better, everything’s smoother,” Xue ‘26 said. “I feel like practices have been going good.”

This Wednesday, Dec. 7, is a free tryout session for new recruits at the Warrior Bowl. Since the official lacrosse season has not started yet, Westwood hopes to recruit newer players interested in playing. 

“For tryouts, I think I’m going to switch positions on the field,” Xue said. “I’m switching from defense to offense. I’m pretty light, so I need to be faster than them.”

The varsity team got to show off their win with “Longhorn Shootout” medals. Players and coaches are hopeful for a dominating streak in the coming season.

“Our varsity team is supposed to have a great season,” Boudoir said. “This year we’ve returned a significant amount of our talent and we’re really optimistic about [being] very successful.”