The rivalry is decades old, but there was something brand new in this season’s first of two regular-season all-Arlington girls neighborhood basketball clashes between the Washington-Liberty Generals and Yorktown Patriots.
The head coaches of both high-school teams are brand new this season as they led the Dec. 19 showdown at Washington-Liberty.
Having first learned to play the precision football position of a long snapper, Brady Owens found himself developing into a talented tight end.
Owens honed those skills into becoming a standout player during his four-year high-school career playing for Arlington’s Yorktown Patriots.
Added together, Arlington’s four boys high-school varsity teams are enjoying their collective best start of a basketball season in decades.
Through Dec. 13 action, the squads had a cumulative 20-3 overall record. One of those three losses was inevitable, as it came in a neighborhood rivalry contest between the Wakefield Warriors and Yorktown Patriots. Yorktown came away with the victory.
Between them, girls and boys varsity public high-school basketball teams in Arlington have six regular-season rivalry games scheduled this season.
The first contest was a boys clash Thursday night, Dec. 11, when the host Wakefield Warriors (3-1) lost to the Yorktown Patriots (4-1) by a 73-41 score in Liberty District action.
The Washington-Liberty Generals girls varsity basketball team is adjusting well to a new coach, the loss of key players and the arrival of new faces.
In addition, first-year coach Horace “Buck” Willis is adapting to the new experience of leading a girls squad.
A total of 17 players from Arlington’s three public high-school varsity football teams were chosen all-region for their performances during the 2025 season.
The two players chosen 6D North Region first-team on defense were seniors, who coincidentally wore uniform number 99. One was middle linebacker Sean Perry of the Wakefield Warriors and the other was lineman Bobby Shea of the Liberty District champion Yorktown Patriots.
With only two players with significant experience returning, questions proliferated for the Wakefield Warriors when the squad opened the boys high-school basketball season Tuesday night (Dec. 2).
Senior guards Jeremiah Poole and Dyson Beaty — a starter and top substitute, respectively, from last season — are those top returners. The duo and their teammates began answering those concerns when Wakefield routed the visiting Falls Church Jaguars, 70-39, in its first contest.
It’s nearly winter and the local prep basketball season has just begun. Yet the sport of baseball was front and center in a unique event held Nov. 30 at Bishop O’Connell High School.
Despite chilly and rainy weather, some 60 players ages 11 to 14 from throughout the metro area gathered at the Arlington private school for a free Thanksgiving-weekend instructional camp.
There is some of the same, but also much is different, about the Yorktown Patriots’ boys basketball team compared to last season’s record-tying, 20-win high-school squad.
Just one full-time starter returns from a Yorktown team that finished first in the Liberty District standings in 2024-25 before falling in the semifinals of the 6D North Region Tournament.
The month of December is the busiest time of the long campaign for girls and boys varsity basketball teams across Arlington and Northern Virginia.
During those 31 days, some squads will play as many as 10 to 12 games, including contests in a variety of tournaments.
The 2025 season was again a success, as usual, for the Bishop O’Connell Knights. But the girls high-school volleyball team fell short in its quest for postseason tournament championships.
O’Connell finished with a 22-3 overall record and advanced as far as the semifinals in both the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference and Division I state private-school tournaments.
Athletes from three Arlington high schools provided the muscle to unload 2,000 Christmas trees in preparation for an annual fundraising sale.
Members of the Yorktown, Washington-Liberty and Wakefield crew teams, plus the Yorktown and W-L lacrosse squads, were up early this morning (Wednesday) to remove the Optimist Club of Arlington’s trees from three tractor-trailers that had arrived overnight from Galax, Va.
