January opens the most important portion of the winter sports seasons for local high-school teams.
Once schools restart play following recent snowy weather conditions, the majority of the remaining regular-season contests will be against district opponents, followed by postseason tournaments.
So far in girls and boys basketball, only a few teams have played any district games so far. At most, teams have played one or two.
From this point forward, though, teams often will play two games per week against district rivals, possibly more if inclement weather continues to postpone games and make-up contests need to be bunched up down the road.
With holiday tournaments concluded, preliminary contests — sometimes referred to as warmups — against non-league opponents are pretty much in the rear-view mirror.
The final 11 regular-season games for the Yorktown Patriots boys basketball team, for example, will be against Liberty District rivals. Similar stretches of games will be the same for other Arlington basketball teams.
All of the remaining games for the Washington-Liberty girls hoop team are against Liberty squads, and the Bishop O’Connell girls play 12 of their remaining basketball contests against conference rivals.
Regular-season action in some cases pretty much wraps up by the end of January, as postseason tournaments start early in February for all winter high-school sports.
Schedules, however, will be heavily weather-dependent.
