We covered college and high school this season, and I have a summer ball post in the works. Might as well close the loop on local amateur baseball and talk a bit about Little League 🙂
Little League district all-star tournaments are finished up in MD and VA. Here’s some quick results to the local leagues:
Northern Virginia
Virginia State Little League is divided into 16 districts, several of which are local to the DC area:
- District 4: Representing areas north of
I-66US Route 50 from the DC line all the way out to Loudoun County. Includes powerhouse local programs from Vienna, McLean and Great Falls. The tournament pool play was held the first week of July. Both McLean teams, Great falls and Vienna National advanced to the District Semis. There, McLean American squeaked by McLean National 3-2 while Great Falls destroyed Vienna National 11-1. In the final, Great Falls outlasted McLean American 9-4. District Champ: Great Falls (2012 Virginia champ) - District 9: Representing Springfield and Woodbridge areas. Tournament results are here. In the knockout rounds, West Springfield American came through the losers bracket to beat Fort Hunt Little League. District Champ: West Springfield American (2005 Virginia State Champ)
- District 10: Representing Fairfax County areas south of I-66, including Fairfax, Annandale, Manassas, Chantilly. Tournament pool play results here. Both teams from Southwestern Youth (Centreville) and Chantilly advanced to the knockout rounds. In the final matchup of the two SYA leagues,
SYA West continued their dominance winning the district 10.2 District Champ: Southwestern Youth West (SYA East was the 2007 and 2010 VA champ) - District 16: Representing Loudoun and Fauquier counties. Tournament bracket here. District Champ: Loudoun South Little League, who outlasted Dulles Little League American in the final.
Local representatives Great Falls, West Springfield American, SYA West and Loudoun South head to the Virginia State Little League tournament this year is in Bridgewater, starting on July 17th, with a lot of history between them. Four State championships in the last decade to be exact. The tournament pits the winners of all 16 Virginia districts.
Links to past Virginia State little League champs: its only up to 2011. Great Falls was your 2012 champ and Tuckahoe in Richmod was 2013. Tuckahoe American will be back in the state tourney to defend its title.
Maryland
Maryland is divided into 8 districts (though only 7 of them compete in the State Tournament; read below for the DC “district 3”). Links to the district results are here.
- District 1: Hagerstown and Northwest Maryland. District champ: Sharpsburg (just south of Hagerstown)
- District 2: Frederick area. District champ: Frederick National.
- District 4: Howard County and South Baltimore: District Champ: Arbutus
- District 5: Elkton/Rising Sun. District Champ: Elkton Community
- District 6: Eastern Shore (Denton, Easton, etc). District champ: Easton
- District 7: Mostly Southern Maryland but also including the massive Bethesda Little League. District Champ: Hughesville
- District 8: Eastern Shore (Berlin, Salisbury). District Champ: West Salisbury
Maryland’s state tournament started over the 7/11/14 weekend; we’ll cover that in the State review in the next post.
DC
Little League baseball in the District historically has been a mess. The website unpage.org has done a great job of capturing the history of little league baseball in the district, which was competitive for years but which completely dried up in the mid 1980s. By the mid 90s though, a rebirth had occurred with DC’s dominant Capitol City league also capturing the Maryland state title.
Washington DC has 6 leagues; two of them are competitive (Northwest and Capitol City) and the others struggle (Capitol Hill, Banniker City, Satchel Paige and Southern). It encompasses just one “district” within Maryland’s structure but for the 11/12 year olds, DC’s winner is treated like a state champ and is entered directly into the Regional tournament. Either Capitol City or Northwest has won the city title every year a tournament has been held. No DC team has ever advanced further than the Mid-Atlantic regional semi finals.
DC’s playoffs are underway and finish up on 7/22/14. We’ll cover them in the state round up.
Nit: I think your description of VA District 4 is off. I have coached in Falls Church’s league, FCKLL, and it is in District 4. So that area is really from north of 50.
ckstevenson
15 Jul 14 at 12:44 pm
I should add: There’s really no reason to worry about Falls Church being in D4 because FCKLL isn’t a particularly good league. I had cousin’s who played in Great Falls’ and the difference in quality was striking.
ckstevenson
15 Jul 14 at 12:47 pm
Fair enough; i’ll edit the post. I’m a Vienna alum and was kind of just looking at who played who and it seemed to basically be the areas abutting the potomac river.
Todd Boss
15 Jul 14 at 1:44 pm
It’s really not important. Since I coached in FCKLL it just stood out to me. I had to go to the site to realize the Mason District (which is Annandale and more) was in D4 too. I totally forgot about that even though we had several games against them.
ckstevenson
15 Jul 14 at 2:22 pm