It was close, but Yorktown High School multiple-sport student-athlete Kaiya Ovando made it with a bit of time to spare.
With many anxiously following her progress, Ovando successfully participated in two different championship high-school sporting events at venues hours apart on Friday, June 5.
A Rhodes scholar and Paralympian who grew up in Arlington is preparing to graduate Stanford University as one of its top engineering students.
Sydney Barta, who was named a 2026 Rhodes scholar last November, was honored last weekend with the Frederick Emmons Terman Engineering Scholastic Award — an honorific that goes to Stanford’s top 30 undergraduate seniors studying engineering.
Field events were where Arlington athletes enjoyed the biggest success during the recent 6D North Region and Class 6 state indoor track and field high-school meets.
In those competitions — held in Landover, Md. (region) and Virginia Beach (state) — county athletes won three events and had top-10 finishes in many more.
With two individual champions for each team leading the way, the Washington-Liberty Generals placed third in the girls and boys region outdoor track-and-field championships.
In addition, both Wakefield and Yorktown high schools brought home individual championship from the event.
With three senior athletes combining to win seven events and as many as 11 others scoring team points, the Washington-Liberty Generals were big winners in the boys Liberty District track-and-field championships.
The Generals were first with 171 points, far more than the runner-up and host Wakefield Warriors with 114 in the high-school competition spread over two different weeks.
The Bishop O’Connell Knights boys and girls track and field teams enjoyed some significant highlights at the famous Penn Relays.
Now in its 129th year, the relays are America’s oldest and largest track-and-field competition, held since 1895 at the University of Pennsylvania at Franklin Field in west Philadelphia.
With multiple individual winners, the Washington-Liberty Generals won the girls and boys team titles at the recent Spartan Classic track-and-field meet at Broad Run High School in Ashburn.
The girls won the 13-team event for the second straight year, scoring 141 points. The boys totaled 133.5.
As she savors a region championship in winter competition, Yorktown High School’s Kaiya Ovando now turns her attention to the spring athletic season.
But first, a quest for a state title looms.
Led by Grace Armitage for the girls and Travon Buckner for the boys, Wakefield High School teams posted strong showings at a recent track-and-field meet.
The boys team placed third and the girls fourth at a multi-team indoor meet at Episcopal High School in Alexandria.
The Washington-Liberty Generals girls track-and-field team again proved itself strong in cold weather at the Bobcat Blizzard Invitational track-and-field meet.
For the second time in three years, the W-L girls team won the championship. The squad finished second in 2023.
