Here’s my first cut through tracking the various local high school baseball tournaments. As we learned in 2014, Maryland and Virginia’s schedules are quite off from each other, with Maryland’s state tournament starting before Virginia’s public high schools even finish their regular seasons, but we’ll keep track the best we can. Here’s 2014’s final prep wrap-up post, with all the various winners noted.
As the Maryland playoffs kicked in, there was an interesting WashPost article about how to setup your pitching for the playoffs. Ironically, one of the main teams mentioned (Reservoir) was upset in the Maryland playoffs, perhaps due to their rotation choices. Personal connection useless tidbit; the Chantilly coach (Kevin Ford) was a long-time local Vienna player and we played with him and his brother (Jeff Ford) all growing up.
Lets get to it.
Northern Virginia
Virginal district tournaments get started last weekend and most are scheduled to finish this week. The VHSL site has some district brackets already published. Here’s a preview of the district tournaments for local conferences with the leading contenders.
The top four teams from each district tourney form the 16-team regional brackets, to be published later on once all the divisions are finalized.
- 6-A Conference 5/Concorde: Oakton and Chantilly are the 1/2 seeds, and Oakton has to be a favorite for the 6-A North regional title.
- 6-A Conference 6/Liberty: McLean and Madison are 1/2 seeds, playing semis on 5/19/15. Madison lost out to McLean for the district title but may be a co-regional favorite with Oakton.
- 6-A Conference 7/Potomac: South County & Lake Braddock perennial favorites.
- 6-A Conference 8/ Cedar Run: Rivals Patriot and Battlefield are 1/2 seeds and have already played three times this year. Both should challenge for the regional title, but I suspect they’re slightly behind the Oaktons and Madisons this year.
I’d love to see an all-Vienna regional final, but teams like Chantilly, Battlfield and McLean could be pesky.
In the 5-A division:
- 5-A Conference 13/Capitol: Marshall and Edison are the 1/2 seeds, as they were last year.
- 5-A Conference 14: Stone Bridge repeats as conference champ, with Broad Run the 2 seed in this small group.
- 5-A Conference 15: Mountain View and Potomac are 1/2 seeds.
- 5-A Conference 16: Halifax, Patrick Henry-Ashland are perennial favorites.
I’d guess Marshall and Stone Bridge are early 5-A regional favorites, but we have no idea how good some of these non-DC area teams are.
There are some DC-local teams in the 4th and smaller divisions (mostly in Loudoun County). We’ll go through them once their brackets are made available on VHSL. The best 4-A team out there is probably Loudoun Valley, currently in the WP top 10.
Maryland
At this point, the Maryland State tournament is well underway, with all four “regional” champions crowned and the State semis set for 5/19/15. Brackets here at the MPSAA website. The Washington Post/AllMetSports.com reviewed all the Regional finals in this online post here. We’ll run-down the regional results with some surprises:
- 4-A Regionals: both of last year’s finalists (Chesapeake and Sherwood) lost early as new blood takes over Maryland states. Perry Hall out of Baltimore took out both number 1 seeds in its regional to take the 4-A north. Wise from Upper Marlboro also took out two PG-county #1 seeds to win the 4-A south. Severna Park beat last year’s 4-A champ Chesapeake en route to the 4-A East championship, and the 4-A West regional final came down to perhaps the two best local Maryland teams, with current #2 All-Met ranked Gaithersburg taking out Montgomery Blair to reach the state semis. State Semis: Perry Hall v Severna Park, Gaithersburg-Wise at U-Maryland on 5/19/15. State final is scheduled for 5/22/15 at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen.
- 3-A Regionals: Last year’s state finalist North Harford (Plyville in North Maryland) repeated as 3-A north champ. Mt. Hebron in Ellicott City pulled the big upset and beat last year’s champion Reservoir in the 3-A East regional final (perhaps because Reservoir lost their ace Cody Morris to TJ surgery). Chopticon (way down in St. Mary’s county) and Urbana (just south of Frederick) filled out the 3-A state semis, beating last year’s regional winner Thomas Johnson en route. State semis set for Joe Cannon stadium in Hanover on 5/19/15.
- 2-A Regionals: Eastern Tech, Patterson Mill, South Carroll and last year’s champ Southern make up the 2-A state semis (mostly smaller schools outside the DC area).
- 1-A Regionals: McDonough, Colonel Richardson, Douglass and Brunswick make up this year’s 1-A state semis (mostly smaller schools outside the DC area).
DC
- DCIAA: the regular season runs through 5/20/15 and the DCIAA tournament runs through 6/3/15.
- DCSAA: the 2015 tournament has yet to be scheduled.
Remember, there’s not usually much suspense in who is winning the DCIAA; Wilson has not lost to a DCIAA opponent in more than 20 years.
Private Leagues: WCAC/MAC/IAC and VISAA/Maryland Private
- MIAA: Powerhouse Spalding beat Calvert Hill to repeat as MIAA Class A champs. St. Mary’s-Annapolis won the MIAA-B championship, also for the 2nd year in a row, and is 52-3 over the past two seasons. ?? won the MIAA-C.
- VISAA: Liberty Christian repeated as the VISAA Division 1 champ. Local teams O’Connell, Flint Hill and Paul VI entered but lost (the entry to this tourney seems to be done via rankings, as opposed to results in the respective league’s post-season tourneys, since Flint Hill was upset but still got invited to VISAA). Greenbriar Christian took the Division 2 title and the Southampton Academy took the Division 3 title among smaller Virginia private schools.
- WCAC: St. Johns topped DeMatha in a 3-game series to win the WCAC for the 2nd year in a row.
- IAC: Georgetown Prep beat Landon to win the IAC, avenging their loss in the finals last year.
- PVAC: Sandy Spring Friends defeated Jewish Day school for the inaugural title in this fledgling league.
- MAC: the Potomac school beat St. James (who upset #1 seed and defending champ Flint Hill) in the final.
My master list of links used to cover HS Baseball:
Local and National High School Baseball Ranking Lists:
- Washington Post All Met Sports Baseball top 10: Spalding, Gaithersburg 1-2, then Oakton, Madison, and Battlefield. Stone Bridge 8th despite a win over Madison in Vienna.
- Baltimore Sun Rankings page: They also have Spalding #1, then Calvert Hall and Reservoir.
- Hampton Roads Baseball top 10 page: Western Branch #1
- Baseball America’s High School top 25 (most recent ranking 5/5/15): no DC/MD/VA teams listed.
- USA Today High School top 25 (most recent ranking 5/6/15): Western Branch closest to top-25, ranked 30th. Spalding (Washington Post’s #1 team) ranked 50th nationally.
- USA Today’s Virginia-only rankings: no longer seem to be in existence.
- MaxPreps top 25/top 50 lists, which has a hand-picked and a computer/power ranking list. 5/18/15 rankings. No DC/MD/VA teams in MaxPrep’s “Excellent 50.”
Resources:
- Washington Post’s AllMetSports section with standings and schedule results.
- InsideNova.com‘s coverage of high school sports, but has put limits on the number of stories you can read.
- The Connection family of newspapers has a sports section that is rarely updated, but it does do some coverage.
- MaxPreps.com also has some non-paywall HS information that comes in handy too.
- Nvdaily.com (Strasburg) has some results for some of the teams in the smaller conferences/outskirts of DC, generally in the Strasburg area.
- WinchesterStar (Winchester) has results for Winchester teams but its pay-only.
- The Daily Progress (Culpeper local paper) also has some scores for schools in its areas.
- Fredericksburg.com has some local coverage of Fredericksburg and Woodbridge teams.
- Richmond Times-Dispatch has a HS scoreboard.
- Hampton Roads Pilot (Hampton Roads) has scores for teams in the Chesapeake/Norfolk/Va Beach area.
- The Baltimore Sun’s high school page has information on some of the programs outside the DC area mentioned in the Maryland section
- I use perfectgame.org to look up high-end HS prospects.
- VHSL’s and MPSSAA home pages for playoff brackets and updates for VA and MD respectively.