A cross-country season that began strong and seldom faltered finished with the Bishop O’Connell Knights boys cross-country team winning the Division I private-school state championship for the first time since 2000.
Improving from fifth place in last year’s meet, the Knights brought home the title Nov. 6 on the 5,000-meter Panorama Farms course near Charlottesville. O’Connell finished ahead of second place and defending state champion Potomac School.
The Bishop O’Connell Knights bounced back from a major defeat in regional action to win the four-team Northern Virginia Independent Schools State Invitational girls soccer tournament.
With a 2-0 home victory over the third-seed St. Paul VI Catholic Panthers in the Thursday (Oct. 6) title game, the top-seeded Knights (14-2-1) won the crown for the second straight year and fourth time in five seasons.
A fifth straight defeat resulted in a double-whammy of bad news for the Wakefield Warriors in Liberty District high-school football action on Halloween eve.
Wakefield’s 42-22 road loss to the Herndon Hornets officially eliminated the Warriors (3-6, 0-5) from a region playoff berth, and means the team will have a losing overall record in its final regular-season contest no matter what.
The strategy of running as a tight group for large portions of the race helped the Bishop O’Connell Knights win two significant boys cross-country championships this fall.
The most recent was a state title, coming Tuesday afternoon (Oct. 21) in Newport News when the Knights won the nine-team State Catholic Cross Country high-school crown on the flat and tight-turned 5,000-meter Newport News Park course.
A soccer season that began with uncertainty when two standout players unexpectedly did not return has become yet another significant winning campaign for the Bishop O’Connell Knights.
The girls high-school team began the week in first place in the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference with a 6-0-1 mark with five shutouts, and stood 10-1-1 overall. O’Connell is expected to be the top seed in the upcoming conference tournament.
The latest two inductees in the Arlington Sports Hall of Fame are the first from any high-school soccer team, girls or boys, in the local sports pantheon’s nearly 70-year history.
The Oct. 8 induction dinner, held at the Knights of Columbus on Little Falls Road, enshrined Alberto Starace and Gabriella “Kika” Toulouse as the latest honorees in a hall of fame that stretches back to the 1950s.
Although neither high-school football team has won many games in recent seasons, the Bishop O’Connell Knights and Bishop Ireton Cardinals still play their version of a Super Bowl each fall.
The annual contest pits the longtime Washington Catholic Athletic Conference (WCAC) private-school rivals each year in a regular-season clash. A victory earns 12 months of bragging rights and, usually, a berth into the WCAC Metro Division playoffs.
They haven’t won any of the games, but Bishop O’Connell’s high-school football schedule the last three seasons has included the addition of a trio of nearby opponents.
The Knights have played the Flint Hill Huskies and Potomac School Panthers for the first time ever in private-school contests, and resumed an all-Arlington rivalry with the public-school Washington-Liberty Generals.
Four new champions — two individuals and two teams — were crowned at this year’s Arlington County high-school cross-country meet, held Sept. 29 at Bluemont Park.
Among those was a rookie in the race: Molly Hardwick, a sophomore for the Yorktown Patriots, who helped her squad win the girls team crown. Hardwick was running the Bluemont Park course for the first time, briefly making a wrong turn, but still winning in 17:51.
An atypical, and unplanned, winning formula has evolved for the Yorktown Patriots in the team’s past two football games.
Yorktown (3-2, 2-0) has won despite being outgained in total yards, but has countered with a takeaway and bend-but-don’t-break defense that sets up points for an offense that is running error-free.
For two seasons now, the Bishop O’Connell Knights have won little during the early portion of their high-school football campaigns.
Through four contests this fall, the private-school squad owns a 1-3 mark, losing to the Washington Patriots (2-2) of Charles Town, W.Va., by a 29-14 score in its most recent contest, played the night of Sept. 19 in non-conference action.
All finally was well for the Bishop O’Connell Knights, and the result was the team’s first victory of the football season.
In the third week of the high-school campaign, host O’Connell (1-2) defeated the winless St. Stephen’s & St. Agnes Saints, 38-12, the afternoon of Sept. 13 in non-conference private-school action.
