The basketball battle for first place in the Liberty District, with three Arlington boys varsity teams included in the chase, is getting interesting.
Heading into Jan. 20 action, the McLean Highlanders were atop the standings with a 5-0 league mark, and Arlington’s Yorktown Patriots were tied for second at 4-1 and 11-4 overall.
Despite days of preparation under their new head coach, the Washington-Liberty Generals came away unsatisfied in a recent match against a perennial Liberty District girls basketball power.
The visiting Generals led the Langley Saxons by five points early in the third quarter, but lost 49-41 to the defending district and 6D North Region tournament champions in the Jan. 5 high-school contest.
With productive scoring and some strong shutdown defense, the Yorktown High School varsity ice-hockey club team is enjoying a 5-1 start this season.
The winning record is no surprise — Yorktown has become one of the top teams in the Northern Virginia Scholastic Hockey League in recent seasons and has an experienced lineup this fall, including eight seniors.
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.
A 15-year-old Yorktown High School sophomore has become the first from Arlington to win a regional competition spotlighting youth pianists.
Sam Brose was selected as the winner among eight finalists in the 2025 Nancy Peery Marriott Young Artist Competition. He and two other young honorees will be spotlighted at the upcoming holiday concert of the National Chamber Ensemble.
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.
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.
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.
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.
