Nationals Arm Race

"… the reason you win or lose is darn near always the same – pitching.” — Earl Weaver

DC/MD/VA District High School Tournament Report

one comment

Now that the prep high school regular seasons are (for the most part) over, here’s a review of some of the DC-area local prep high school tournaments.   Last year I only covered the Virginia tourneys (in the interest of openness; i’m a resident and an alum of Northern Virginia and have more interest in the Virginia side of the house), but this year i’ve thrown in coverage of the Maryland side, the private leagues and DC.

The Maryland tournament nearly finishes before the Virginia districts start, as do the private high school tournaments.  Meanwhile there’s not much to report in DC, but we’ll talk about them at the end of the post.

Here we go:

Virginia

Conference tournaments are starting this week, so we’ll talk more about how some local favorites are doing in the next iteration of this post.

Thanks to the beauty of bureacracy, Northern Virginia’s old district “names” have gone by the wayside (the “Northern Region” used to be the Concorde, Liberty, National and Patriot districts, and before that it was Northern, Great Falls, Alexandria and Potomac), and we now have the unemotional numbering of districts.  Except there seems to be some transition between the old names and the new conference numbers.   Conference #’s 5-8 are basically the 6-A schools in Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun and some PW counties.  Conference #s 13-15 are basically the 5-A/smaller high schools from around Northern Virginia.  Links to conference standings at allmetsports.com are here and standings at insidenova are here but results are spotty in some/most cases.

Confusing matters are the fact that some of the conferences with PW and Fauquier schools also have schools that aren’t considered proximiate to the DC area, so sites like allmetsports.com and InsideNova.com don’t really cover them.  And, the conference tournament schedules seem all in dis-array this year, with some conferences starting their district tournaments earlier than others.

  • Conference 4: Bigger PW and Fauquier schools from the old Northwestern Region: Hylton and Colonial Forge are powers this year.
  • Conference 5/Concorde: Contains regional powerhouses Oakton, Chantilly, Robinson, Westfield and Centreville.  Led by Chantilly this year.
  • Conference 6/Liberty: Dominated this year by Madison, with last year’s upstarts like Yorktown/Washington & Lee and the McLean schools struggling.  Conference play kicked off on 5/18/14 with Langley beating Hayfield and McLean upsetting South Lakes.
  • Conference 7: Several big-time baseball programs historically in Lake Braddock, WT Woodson and South County.  This year led by West Springfield.
  • Conference 8: a smaller grouping of Western Prince William/Fauquier County high schools; contains strong teams (by record) Battlefield, Osbourn Park and Patriot.
  • Conference 13: A weaker collection of smaller high schools from Arlington/Alexandria and Fairfax counties.  Marshall seems like the contender here.
  • Conference 14: Newer/smaller high schools from Loudoun County and includes Stone Bridge, which is dominating its district this year led by 1st round talent Jacob Bukauskas.
  • Conference 15: Smaller high schools from Southern PW county and behond: historic power Potomac (VA) is here and they play mostly schools from further south.

Upcoming Schedule (VHSL site and VHSL Conference/Regional results, which won’t get populated until the tourneys start).

  • Regular Season ending: week of May 13-May 16th.
  • Virginia District Tournaments are scheduled from May 25th-May 30th, but some kicked off on 5/18/14.
  • Virginia Regionals: June 5th
  • Virgina State Semis and finals: June 10-13th.

Maryland

Some of the best Maryland-based baseball programs are either private (WCAC’s St. Johns and Riverdale Baptist) or are considered lesser talents than their Northern Virginia counterparts.   But, there are some good Maryland teams to keep an eye on during the upcoming Maryland “Section” Finals.  (MPSSAA home page), here’s a review of where we stand in the Maryland playoffs.

Maryland is divided into these four “sections” by size, and then each section has a North/South/East/West division that encompasses the entire state.  The winners of each section/division then make up the state semi-finalists, played at Cal Ripken’s Aberdeen stadium.

Schedule: By looking at each classification as one big bracket (see the links from MPSSAA’s page):

  • the round of 64 was on Saturday 5/10/14, held at the higher seed’s location.
  • the round of 32 (where the #1 seeds start)  was held on Monday 5/12/14, also at the higher seed’s location.
  • The round of 16 is being held on Wednesday 5/14/14 at the higher seed’s field.
  • The round of 8/Sectional championships are are on Friday 5/16/14 at a field determined (as far as I can tell) by a coin flip.
  • The round of 4 or the State semi finals are on 5/20/14 at various neutral fields around the state (Joe Cannon near BWI, U Maryland’s home field are example sites).
  • The state finals are at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen on 5/24/14.

Here’s the summary of the Maryland State Sectionals and State tournament so far:

  • 4-A State Playoff Bracket (alt bracket via maxprepsBowie and Elanor Roosevelt, Chesapeake, Arundel, Gaithersburg and Blair all look promising at the onset to make the state tournament.  In the round of 32 state-wide, the seeding mostly held as no #1 seeds were upset and nearly every #2 seed advanced.   The round of 16s saw the Bowie-Elanor Roosevelt anticipated matchup, with Elanor Roosevelt coming out on top 10-8.  Laurel blitzed sectional #1 seed Duval 20-3 to face Elanor Roosevelt in the state quarters.  And Bethesda’s Walt Whitman faces off with its sectional #1 seed Gaithersburg after upsetting #1 seed Blair in the state round of 16.  5/18/14: Regional champs crowned and state semis set: Elanor Roosevelt (Greenbelt), Sherwood (Sandy Spring/Olney), Gaithersburg and Chesapeake (Pasadena, near Annapolis) are in the state final four.
  • 3-A State Playoff Bracket (alt bracket via maxpreps): Columbia’s Atholton and La Plata in Southern Maryland are WP top-10 teams to keep an eye on.   In the round of 32 state-wide a couple of #1 seeds faltered but otherwise the favorites stayed alive.  In the round-of-16 Atholton was upset but LaPlata stormed onwards, joined by local schools Seneca Valley and Thomas Johnson in the state quarter finals.  5/18/14: Regional Champs crowned: La Plata, North Harford (Plysville, near PA border north of Baltimore), Thomas Johnson (Frederick) and Reservoir (Fulton, near Columbia) are into the state-semis.
  • 2-A State Playoff Bracket (alt bracket via maxpreps) features Poolesville’s lofty 17-1 team amongst the few DC-local high schools small enough to qualify.  The round of 32-statewide went mostly to form, with Poolesville getting by.   Poolesville continued to  hold serve in the round of 16, joined by Calvert in a #1 sectional-seed heavy state quarterfinals bracket.   5/18/14: Regional Champs crowned: local favorite Poolsville is joined by Southern (in Harwood, south of Annapolis), Hereford (in Parkton, north of Baltimore on I-83) and Parkside (in Salisbury) in the state semis.
  • 1-A features no DC-area local schools and is populated by smaller schools from the state’s further reaches.  Bracket via maxpreps is here.  Two small high schools from Baltimore are joined by schools from Cambridge and Smithsburg (outside of Hagerstown) in the state semis.

Private Leagues: WCAC/MAC/IAC and VISAA/Maryland Private

The major local Catholic League (WCAC) featured several good baseball programs this year (perennially tough Paul VI and St. Johns) as well as upstart DeMatha and Gonzaga.  St. Johns faced O’Connell for the WCAC championship and swept the two-game final series by a combined score of 19-0 to win the WCAC.   Flint Hill has dominated the MAC behind UVA commit Tommy Doyle, and easily took the title in mid-May over St. James.  And in the IAC, Georgetown Prep finished undefeated in group play and played a very tough out-of-conference schedule, facing most of the heavyweight private schools in the area.  However St. Albans upset the Little Hoyas in the IAC final.

Oddly, the Virginia Independent School Athletic Association (VISSA)’s state tournament runs concurrent to both the local district tournaments, causing teams to really stretch their pitching to win both competitions.   Three big-time NoVa based programs are all grouped in the VISSA Division I bracket (Paul VI, O’Connell and Flint Hill), though only Flint Hill has advanced to the state quarter finals.  They were subsequently blanked in the semis by Charlottesville’s St. Anne’s-Belfield, who lost in the final to Lynchburg’s Liberty Christian HS.

Lastly, the Maryland Private High School tournament kicks off the week of 5/19/14, featuring 6 of the best private schools on the Maryland side.  We’ll see DC local private schools DeMatha, Riverdale Baptist, Good Counsel and Spalding (If anyone has a link to this tournament with more information, let me know).

DC Public Schools/DCIAA

As was chronicled earlier this year in the Washington Post, there’s not much in the way of suspense when it comes to DCIAA baseball tournaments.  Wilson HS has a 21-year winning streak against its DCPS league mates and has won games in the city this year by scores of 15-0 (Anacostia), 16-0 (Theodore Roosevelt) and an astounding 30-0 (over Ballou).

Written by Todd Boss

May 20th, 2014 at 12:24 pm

One Response to 'DC/MD/VA District High School Tournament Report'

Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack to 'DC/MD/VA District High School Tournament Report'.

  1. […] we last checked in with Prep Baseball on 5/20/14, Maryland was through its regionals, the private schools were mostly done, DC was still […]

Leave a Reply