Talk about a full and complete season.
When Malia Perry participates in next week’s Virginia High School League Girls State Open golf tournament, the Washington-Liberty Generals’ senior will have played in every postseason tournament possible this fall — five in total.
In a string of strong postseason performances, the Meridian Mustangs saved their best for last.
With a season-best 18-hole team score of 297, the high-school golfers won their first state championship. It was an unexpected turn of events, given how the season began, but the team ultimately hit its stride and never looked back.
Led by a tight pack of runners, the Washington-Liberty Generals won a recent showcase cross-country meet.
The high-school team tallied 152 points to finish first in the girls elite race at the Oct. 19 Virginia Showcase meet in Mechanicsville, near Richmond.
The pickleball craze has reached Wakefield High School.
With 18 members and growing, pickleball has become the latest new club at the Arlington school. Spearheaded by senior and varsity tennis player Keyla Park Hernández and her father, Paul Joseph Park, who serves as the coach, the club meets Monday and Wednesday afternoons.
Female competitors will take the spotlight for the remainder of the Virginia High School League’s 2024 golf season.
Thirteen players from Arlington schools are among 70 throughout Northern Virginia that will participate in a state-tournament qualifying event at Twin Lakes Golf Course in Clifton. Then, on Monday, Oct. 28, those who earned berths will play in the VHSL’s Girls State Open, for all enrollment classifications combined, at Heritage Oaks Golf Course in Harrisonburg.
The Wakefield Warriors fell to 2-6 overall with a 40-15 road loss to the Marshall Statesmen on Oct. 18.
The third straight setback kept Wakefield winless in the Liberty District high-school football standings with a 0-4 record.
Trailing 10-0 at halftime to an opponent with many bigger linemen, the Bishop O’Connell Knights were confident they were still in the game.
In the second half, though, that size advantage for the host St. Mary’s Ryken Knights began wearing on O’Connell, which eventually lost the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference Metro Division high-school football game, 38-7, Friday night (Oct. 18) in Maryland.
Tight games had been the norm the last few times the Liberty District rivals Yorktown Patriots and Langley Saxons met in high-school football action.
What a difference in 2024. Host Langley won big, 48-14, having taken control right from the start.
Dominating its competition at times, the Yorktown Patriots finished a fourth straight regular season undefeated against district field-hockey rivals.
Yorktown (11-3 overall) was 6-0 and outscored Liberty District opponents, 26-1 with five shutouts, in play this fall. The Patriots will be the top seed in the seven-team district tournament, a competition they have won three straight times with 2-0 records each year, and have a first-round bye.
Their fifth-place finish wasn’t what they hoped for. Yet the experience of just playing in the state golf tournament for the first time was notable for the Washington-Liberty Generals.
The squad capped its best season in program history with a 324 team score on a chilly and windy day at the Virginia High School League one-day, 18-hole Class 6 state tourney Oct. 15. The event was held on the par-72 Norman course at the Lansdowne Resort in Loudoun County.
After 75 years at the same location, the Washington-Liberty High School crew program is leaving the only home it has known.
By the end of 2024, the program will move its operation from the Potomac Boat Club on Water Street in D.C. after three-quarters of a century to the Columbia Island Marina in the Pentagon lagoon near the interchange of the George Washington Memorial Parkway and Interstate 395 in Arlington.
The high-school football season continues this week for three of Arlington’s four teams, with the other idle.
The undefeated and Liberty District-leading Washington-Liberty Generals (7-0, 3-0) are off with a bye this week. Their season resumes, Friday, Oct. 25 at 7 p.m. with a home game against their district rival McLean Highlanders (3-3, 0-2).
