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.
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.
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.
A Marymount University women’s basketball standout of the 1990s has been selected to coach the Yorktown High School girls basketball team.
Jessica Turgon will take over from Devaughn Drayton, who recently stepped down after 13 seasons at Yorktown.
Horace Willis, a staff member at Washington-Liberty High School for 28 years, recently was hired to be the head coach of the school’s girls varsity basketball team.
Williams — known to most as “Buck” — takes over for Maddy DeCou. She left after two seasons in the position to become an assistant coach on the staff at nearby Marymount University.
The website Novahoops.com recently named a number of high-school basketball players from Arlington to its girls and boys all-Northern Virginia freshman and sophomore teams for the 2024-25 season.
On the girls sophomore team was Arlington’s Sabrina Anderson, a guard for the Potomac School private squad, who already has scored 1,000 career points. Bishop O’Connell’s Mia Morrill was chosen a reserve on the sophomore team.
In addition to his vast success as a high-school basketball coach throughout the metro area, the late Jim Spiridopoulos is being remembered for his unique, passionate and tireless involvement and dedication to the sport and to his players.
Spiridopoulos, known to many as “Spiro”, died April 29 after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 80.
For Maddy DeCou, the chance to coach for the college basketball team where she played was too good an opportunity to pass up.
So the head coach of the Washington-Liberty Generals girls high-school hoop team the past two seasons made the tough decision. She stepped down, accepting a job as an assistant coach in the same sport for Arlington’s nearby Division III Marymount University women’s team.
Once members of rival boys high-school basketball teams in Arlington, this past winter Alan Treakle and Liam Vitters played different roles for the same Division I men’s college squad that won a national championship.
Treakle, a Wakefield High School graduate, was the director of basketball operations, and Yorktown High grad Vitters was a walk-on freshman forward for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Mocs, which won the National Invitational Tournament with a 5-0 record.
