With road victories over two Arlington rivals this past week, the Yorktown Patriots finished the regular-season boys basketball campaign with a 19-3 overall record.
Yorktown finished first with an 11-1 record in the Liberty District and will be the top seed in the upcoming postseason tournament, a first since the Patriots joined that high-school league in the 2015-16 season.
Dominique Tham’s basketball journey recently brought him back to Wakefield High School, where he was a standout boys player for the Warriors.
Tham — a 2015 Wakefield graduate — was on hand Monday night (Feb. 10) to have his uniform jersey No. 32 honored during a brief ceremony prior to Wakefield’s home varsity game against the Yorktown Patriots.
With the exception of a number of private-school basketball games, the winter regular-season sports schedule has been completed for Arlington varsity teams.
But the post-season competition is about to hit its stride.
Neighborhood-rivalry high-school basketball games are meant to be this way — nothing comes easy, both teams play hard, scoring is difficult and the contest is close throughout.
Such was the case when the host Wakefield Warriors nipped the Washington-Liberty Generals, 40-39, Friday night (Feb. 7) in a Liberty District boys game between Arlington teams.
Led by a speedy winning relay, the Bishop O’Connell Knights enjoyed a top finish in the biggest swimming-and-diving meet in the metro area for private high-school teams.
The Knights placed second with 501 points in the girls meet of the Washington Metropolitan Prep School Swim & Dive League (WMPSSDL) championships at the University of Maryland.
With a 3-0 record, the Washington-Liberty Generals won this season’s Arlington County wrestling meet between the jurisdiction’s four high-school teams.
The Generals defeated the Bishop O’Connell Knights, Yorktown Patriots and host Wakefield Warriors.
Earning big points by nearly sweeping the high jump helped the Wakefield Warriors win a third straight Liberty District boys track-and-field championship.
Wakefield won the high-school meet with 135 points. That total included 25 points in the high jump, with the Warriors finishing first, second, third, fifth, seventh and eighth in the event.
Wrestlers from three Arlington County high schools recently earned berths at the Zone 4 qualifying event to participate in the Virginia High School League girls state tournament.
The top five wrestlers in each weight class earned those berths at Hayfield Secondary School, with the fifth-place finishers designated as alternates.
Gabriela Netwall and Ella Kaplan were big point-scorers in helping the Washington-Liberty Generals win the Liberty District girls track-and-field championship.
Each participated in multiple individual events in the high-school meet, and ran on the winning 4×200 relay in 1:48.66, as the Generals amassed 140 points.
With their best performance of the season, the Washington-Liberty Generals extended their girls gymnastics campaign with a satisfying and somewhat surprising runner-up finish at the Liberty District championships.
The high-school team, which hosted the meet, had a 131.825 point total, well behind the defending champion McLean Highlanders with 139.825. Washington-Liberty also finished second to McLean last season.
There was not a winner of any event from the three Arlington boys high-school teams at the Liberty District swimming and diving championship, but there were some notable individual performances.
Lucas Lopez of the Wakefield Warriors swam to the highest finishes with a second in the 100 backstroke and a fourth in the 100 butterfly.
The routine, also now an expectation, of winning another girls Liberty District swimming and diving championship has continued for the Yorktown Patriots.
For the eighth straight season, Yorktown won that high-school title, this year in a rout, scoring 509 points. Yorktown’s Arlington rival Washington-Liberty Generals were a distant second with 372.
