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. \u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
The Maryland tournament nearly finishes before the Virginia districts start, as do the private high school tournaments. \u00a0Meanwhile there’s not much to report in DC, but we’ll talk about them at the end of the post.<\/p>\n
Here we go:<\/p>\n
Virginia<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Thanks to the beauty of bureacracy<\/a>, 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. \u00a0Except there seems to be some transition between the old names and the new conference numbers. \u00a0 Conference #’s 5-8 are basically the 6-A schools in Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun and some PW counties. \u00a0Conference #s 13-15 are basically the 5-A\/smaller high schools from around Northern Virginia. \u00a0Links to conference standings at allmetsports.com<\/a> are here and standings at insidenova are here<\/a> but results are spotty in some\/most cases.<\/p>\n 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. \u00a0And, the conference tournament schedules seem all in dis-array this year, with some conferences starting their district tournaments earlier than others.<\/p>\n Upcoming Schedule (VHSL site<\/a>\u00a0and VHSL Conference\/Regional results<\/a>, which won’t get populated until the tourneys start).<\/p>\n Maryland<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Some of the best Maryland-based baseball programs are either private (WCAC’s St. Johns<\/strong> and Riverdale Baptist<\/strong>) or are considered lesser talents than their Northern Virginia counterparts. \u00a0 But, there are some good Maryland teams to keep an eye on during the upcoming Maryland “Section” Finals<\/a>. \u00a0(MPSSAA home page<\/a>), here’s a review of where we stand in the Maryland playoffs.<\/p>\n 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. \u00a0The winners of each section\/division then make up the state semi-finalists, played at Cal Ripken’s Aberdeen stadium.<\/p>\n Schedule: By looking at each classification as one big bracket (see the links from MPSSAA’s page):<\/p>\n Here’s the summary of the Maryland State Sectionals and State tournament so far:<\/p>\n Private Leagues: WCAC\/MAC\/IAC and VISAA\/Maryland Private<\/strong><\/p>\n The major local Catholic League (WCAC<\/strong><\/span>) featured several good baseball programs this year (perennially tough Paul VI<\/strong> and St. Johns<\/strong>) as well as upstart DeMatha<\/strong> and Gonzaga<\/strong>. \u00a0St. Johns faced O’Connell<\/a>\u00a0for the WCAC championship and swept the two-game final series by a combined score of 19-0 to win the WCAC<\/a>. \u00a0\u00a0Flint Hill<\/strong> has dominated<\/a> the MAC<\/strong><\/span> behind UVA commit\u00a0Tommy Doyle<\/strong>, and easily took the title<\/a> in mid-May over St. James. \u00a0And in the IAC<\/strong><\/span>, Georgetown Prep<\/strong> finished undefeated in group play and played a very tough out-of-conference schedule, facing most of the heavyweight private schools in the area. \u00a0However St. Albans<\/strong> upset the Little Hoyas in the IAC final<\/a>.<\/p>\n Oddly, the Virginia Independent School Athletic Association<\/a> (VISSA<\/strong><\/span>)’s state tournament runs concurrent to both the local district tournaments, causing teams to really stretch their pitching to win both competitions. \u00a0 Three big-time NoVa based programs are all grouped in the VISSA Division I bracket<\/a> (Paul VI, O’Connell and Flint Hill), though only Flint Hill has advanced to the state quarter finals<\/a>. \u00a0They were subsequently blanked in the semis by Charlottesville’s St. Anne’s-Belfield<\/strong>, who lost in the final to Lynchburg’s Liberty Christian HS<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Lastly, the Maryland Private High School<\/a> tournament kicks off the week of 5\/19\/14, featuring 6 of the best private schools on the Maryland side. \u00a0We’ll see DC local private schools DeMatha, Riverdale Baptist, Good Counsel<\/strong> and Spalding<\/strong> (If anyone has a link to this tournament with more information, let me know).<\/p>\n DC Public Schools\/DCIAA<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n As was chronicled earlier this year in the Washington Post<\/a>, there’s not much in the way of suspense when it comes to DCIAA baseball tournaments. \u00a0Wilson HS<\/strong> has a 21-year winning streak against its DCPS league mates and has won games in the city<\/a> this year by scores of 15-0 (Anacostia<\/strong>), 16-0 (Theodore Roosevelt<\/strong>) and an astounding 30-0 (over Ballou<\/strong>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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. \u00a0 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 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