Considering its vast past success over many years, lofty expectations are the case every season for the Bishop O’Connell Knights girls softball team.
Nothing will be different this spring, with the high-school squad coming off a perfect 23-0 season, owning a three-season 54-game winning streak and having won a combined 15 straight conference and private-school state-tournament championships.
The winter sports season is now complete for all four high schools in Arlington. Now it’s on to the busy multi-sport outdoor spring season.
The regular season is just getting started, with only a few events in the coming week, but many scrimmage contests are being played. The full regular-season schedules begin the week of March 17.
The Bishop O’Connell Knights had short-lived, one-game stays in the girls and boys Washington Catholic Athletic Conference basketball tournaments, each finishing 0-1.
The fourth-seeded boys high-school team (22-9) lost to the visiting and No. 5 seed St. John’s, 65-57, in a first-round game. The sixth-seed O’Connell girls (17-15) fell on the road, 80-41, to the No. 3 seed Bishop Ireton Cardinals.
For years, Arlington has been somewhat unique in having high-school varsity athletes successfully participate in two sports during the same season.
One year, during the winter campaign, Yorktown High’s Ari Molina won a Liberty District wrestling championship in Arlington in the early evening.
In the Virginia private-school state tournament held at the Potomac School in McLean, Bishop O’Connell Knights’ freshman Peyton Friedman finished second at 106 pounds.
Friedman had a 3-1 record with a pin and a technical fall in the high-school meet. He was pinned in the final.
All that remains on the winter high-school schedule for Arlington teams are state-championship events in a number of private- and public-school sports.
State competitions are ongoing in basketball, gymnastics, swimming/diving, track-and-field and wrestling.
The Bishop O’Connell Knights swimming and diving teams concluded their winter high-school seasons with third-place finishes at the recent Virginia private school state meet in Stafford.
The improvement in places from a year ago were significant for O’Connell, when the boys were eighth and the girls 16th.
There weren’t any individual champions, but there were notable performances from some young Bishop O’Connell Knights athletes at the private school indoor state track-and-field meet.
The O’Connell girls and boys high-school teams each finished 11th in the overall team standings.
This week’s high-school sports schedule is all about the winter playoffs remaining for some teams in Arlington.
Some gymnasts, wrestlers and swimmers/divers will be competing in Virginia High School League Class 6 state championship meets the next few days. The state track-and-field meet also is upcoming.
Some 80 members of the Bishop O’Connell High School swimming and diving team, and a few alumni, recently raised nearly $17,000 during a swim-a-thon for Area 26 Special Olympics.
The team significantly surpassed its fund-raising goal of $10,000 by collecting a total of $16,931.
There was at least one individual champion from three of the Arlington high-school teams at district and conference wrestling tournaments.
The Yorktown Patriots had the most winners, with two. The Wakefield Warriors and Washington-Liberty Generals had one each, with the highest finish from a Bishop O’Connell Knights grappler being second.
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.
