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Prep Baseball Update #2 2017: Maryland State Champs, Virginia Regional Champs crowned

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Update #2 for DC/MD/VA Prep baseball for 2017.

Here’s the rough schedule of posting and what we’ll cover:

  • #1: DC/MD/VA District High School Tournament Report: post-season kickoff.  Covers: MD regionals, VA district brackets, Private school tourney updates.  Usually publishes the week before Memorial day tournament finals.
  • #2: Maryland State Champs, Northern VA Regional Champs crowned (this post).  Covers: MD state finals, VA regionals finals.  Usually publishes first week of June.
    #3: Virginia State Champions crowned.  Covers: VA state tourneys, recaps MD, DC, Private School results.  Publishes mid-June once the Va state tourney wraps up.
  • #4: Players of the Year/All-State lists and final rankings; publishes early July once all the all-state lists are published.

Lets see where we stand now with Virginia having completed their regional tournaments and setup state semi finals’ matchups.

Text in Red are pending results, which we’ll pick up in the next post in this series.

All Virginia regional finals were played on 6/2/17; here’s the scoreboard with all results.  Winner highlighted in bold red.

Virginia

Here are the Virginia Conference champions, regular season and tournament.  All these playoff brackets, if they exist, are at this link at VHSL.  I won’t re-link all the playoff brackets per district/region below.

6-A North Regional  Conference Tournament Results: 

  • 6-A Conference 5/Concorde: Oakton beat Westfield
  • 6-A Conference 6/Liberty: Madison squeaked by Langley
  • 6-A Conference 7/Potomac: West Springfield blanked South County
  • 6-A Conference 8/ Cedar Run: Patriot cruised to the district title over Osborne Park

Regional Tournament Results: The four expected #1 seeds advanced easily in the first round of the Regional tournament; Oakton, Madison, West Springfield and Patriot.  In the regional quarters, all four #1 seeds advanced again; Madison advanced easily over Lake Braddock 6-0, Oakton advanced over Battlefield 5-3, West Springfield easily handled Westfield 9-2, and Patriot downed Robinson 1-0 on a walk-off homer.   The regional semi-finals on 5/30/17 were both interrupted by a massive storm that moved through and were completed on 5/31/17.  In those regional semis, Oakton walked-off with a Sac Fly in the bottom of the 7th to top Madison 3-2 while Patriot held off West Springfield 4-3 to punch their tickets to the State tourney.  The Madison/Oakton game was a rematch of an earlier game this season, easily won by Madison, so that result was surprising.  Patriot over West Springfield was more expected, given Patriot’s traditional strength.

Regional Final: Oakton got a n extra-innings, 2-run walk-off homer  from Junior Eric Lingenbach to take the 6A regional title from Patriot 3-2.

 

6-A South Region: mostly covering Richmond, Roanoke and Virginia Beach area.  But there are just enough schools in Woodbridge proper to form a 6-A conference closer to DC with teams that are typically considered for All-Met rankings.   Unlike 6A-North, just the top two teams from each district make the Regional tournament.  Thus, the district tournaments here are lagging the district tournaments for the North region, which finished before theirs even began.

VHSL bracket link here.  Direct link to Tide-water area tourney schedules at Pilot Online.    Direct link to Richmond area tourney schedules at the Times-Dispatch.

  • 6-A Conference 1/Coastal: Cox defeated Kellam in a battle of Va Beach heavy-weights.
  • 6-A Conference 2/Monitor Merrimac: Western Branch beat Oscar Smith in an upset-filled district tourney where top-ranked Granby and Woodside were upset early.
  • 6-A Conference 3: Manchester d Thomas Dale in a district tourney that went chalk.
  • 6-A Conference 4: Woodbridge d Colonial Forge 12-11 in a barn burner.

Regional Results: all four district champs won their quarter final matchups, with Cox having the easiest time of it.   In the Semis, Cox beat Manchester 3-2 and Western Branch handled Woodbridge 5-3. 

Region Final:  Cox rallies to defeat Western Branch 4-3.

5-A North Region:

Conference winners:

  • 5-A Conference 13/Capitol: Marshall
  • 5-A Conference 14: Briar Woods
  • 5-A Conference 15: Potomac
  • 5-A Conference 16: Halifax

Regional Results: (5-a Regional bracket): There were some small upsets in the play-in games in the first round of the 5A North regional; an under-seeded Stafford fell to Stone Bridge (despite finishing the regular season 19-2) and#3 Seed Atlee easily beat #2 seed Wakefield.  The other #2 seeds (Orange and North Stafford) advanced as expected to face the #1 seeds in the quarters.  Stone Bridge faces one of the best teams in the state in Halifax, whose #1 starter (Andrew Abbott) has a ridiculous 133/3 K/BB ratio this spring and is UVA bound (h/t NovaBaseballMagazine.com).  In the quarters, #1 seeds Briar Woods, Potomac and Halifax all advanced, while North Stafford blanked Marshall to advance to the semis.  In the Semis, Briar Woods thrashed Potomac 8-1 while Halifax held off the surprising North Stafford team 2-1 in 12 innings.

Region Final: Briar Woods destroyed top 5-A team Halifax 10-0 to continue a surprising run in the post-season (they weren’t even the #1 seed in their own district).

 

5-A South Region

  • 5-A Conference 9/Atlantic: Kempsville d Hickory.
  • 5-A Conference 10/PenSouth: Menchville d Clouchester.
  • 5-A Conference 11: Deep Run d Mills Goodwin.
  • 5-A Conference 12: Prince George d Matoaca.

Quick predictions for 5-A south regional tourney: Prince George at 19-1 and Hickory are good bets to advance

Regional Results: as with the 6A-South tourney, all four district champs held serve in the quarter finals, mostly with ease.  In the Semis, Prince George and Menchville advanced, with the Menchville pitcher throwing a no-hitter to add insult to injury.

Region Final: Prince George continued 5A dominance, topping Menchville 13-5.

Smaller Virginia Classifications

4-A West:

  • 4-A Conference 21 East/A: Heritage upset #1 seed Loudoun Valley then #2 Seed Loudoun County to win the district.  Heritage and Loudoun County to regionals.
  • 4-A Conference 21 West/B: Harrisonburg beat Sherando in a 2/1 seed upset to advance to regionals.
  • 4-A Conference 22: Kettle Run easily won the region over Freedom to advance as the 4A North #1 seed with an unblemished 19-0 record.

4A Regionals preview: (bracket here): Kettle Run and Liberty Christian Academy look like they’re destined to meet in the 4A West regional final.  In the tournament though, Kettle Run was upset early by Lynchburg’s EC Glass.  Liberty Christian won on a walkoff, and they are joined by Harrisonburg and Freedom-South Riding (which recently dropped down from 5A).  The semis were a contrast in styles, as LCA won 1-0 over Freedom-South Riding while Harrisonburg topped EC Glass by a football-score of 14-13.

In the 4A regional final, Liberty Christian won another squeaker, topping Harrisonburg 1-0, validating their move to compete in the public schools VHSL.

4-A East (Bracket here)

Preview: I’d say that the two best teams here are Great Bridge (which has great baseball history as of late and just dropped down from 5A) and Hanover (which won the old AAA title just before reclassification and can easily compete with 5A and 6A schools).  In the 4A East quarters, Great Bridge, Dinwiddie, Hanover and Jamestown all advanced to the semis.  There, the expected wins for Hanover and Great Bridge occurred, setting up a great regional final (thought it took Hanover 13 innings to top Jamestown.

In the 4A East final, Hanover held on to top Great Bridge 4-3 in a battle of two of Virginia’s top high schools irrespective of division.  This matchup, coincidentally was the 2013 State Final just prior to going to 6 divisions.

3A West: Turner Ashby blanked Brookville 4-0 in the Regional final.

3A East: Riverside beat Spotsylvania in the final 9-6.  Riverside is in Ashburn and is coached by the former Stone Bridge coach Sam Plank, fyi.

Lower Divisions 2A and 1A features teams from the smaller areas of Virginia and we won’t bother covering them this year.  IF you want to see their regional and state brackets, visit the VHSL site above.

Maryland

Here’s the 2017 state finals results in Maryland, played over the 5/26/17 weekend.  Brackets here at the MPSAA website.

A quick list of past Maryland State champions by division:

The Maryland public high school seasons are now complete.

DC Public Schools/DCIAA:

  • DCIAA: (2017 playoff bracket): Wilson defeated School Without Walls 7-4 to take the DCIAA title and continue its ridiculous winning streak within DC public school competition.
  • DCSAA: (2017 Playoff Bracket): Gonzaga beat Wilson 9-1 to win the DCSAA baseball title (Wilson upset St. Albans to make the final).

DC public (and private) High school seasons are now complete.

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

State-level Private School tourneys:

  • MIAA: Regular Season: Calvert Hall, Spalding and Gilman were the class of the MIAA Class A all  year.  Boys Latin takes the Class B regular season title while St. Johns Catholic is again the Class C regular season title winner.   Loyola Blakefield came out of nowhere to beat Calvert Hall in the MIAA-A playoffs (their first title in 71 years), having just a .500 record during the season.  Boy’s Latin beat Severn to take the MIAA-B final.  St. Johns Catholic ended up beating Gerstell Academy 5-0 to win its 4th straight MIAA-C title.
  • VISAA: The VISAA playoff brackets show the top 8 private schools in each Virginia division.  In Division I; DC local schools Paul VI and Potomac School were upset early, with #3 seed Benedictine taking the VISAA Division I title.  The Miller School took the Division II title with defending champ Greenbrier Christian getting upset in the first round.  Southampton Academy repeated as VISSA Division III titleists.
  • Maryland Private School “Governor’s Flag” Tournament: tbd.  Draws are here. Only seems like there’s 4 teams for 2017: DeMatha, Spalding, McNamara and Avalon.  I’d guess this would be a cake-walk for Spalding.

DC-area Private School Leagues

Of note, Maryland baseball factory Riverdale Baptist won their 4th straight NACA National Championship, finished the year 30-1 and nationally ranked in every publication that attempts to rank national high schools.

All Area private schools’ seasons are now complete.

Individual Player Accolades Announced

In addition to being playoff-baseball time, this is also the time of the year that we start to see player awards.  I’ll put these in as they publish, but we won’t expect most of these until the end of June.

Gatorade announced their player of the year awards on 5/29/17:

  • Maryland: Harold Cortijo, RHP/OF from Riverdale Baptist.  Committed to play at Seminole State U.
  • Washington DC: Jack Roberts, RHP/SS from St. Johns.  Committed to play at Elon.
  • Virginia: Andrew Abbott, LHP from Halifax County HS.  Committed to play for UVA.

Pending Awards to be announced/expected later this spring:

  • Louisville Slugger All-Americans: pending
  • Washington Post All-Met teams: pending
  • The Baltimore Sun’s All-Metro Team: pending
  • Richmond Times-Dispatch All-Richmond team (if exists): pending
  • Virginian Pilot All-tidewater team (if exists): pending
  • Virginia All 6-A North Regional team: Langley’s Danny Hosley is player of the year (no PG profile/unknown college commit).  Madison’s Jake Nielsen pitcher of the year (a Junior w/o a current college commitment).
  • Virginia All 5-A North Regional team: pending
  • Other Virginia All-Regional teams: pending
  • Northern Virginia All-District teams: Available at this link at Novabaseballmagazine.com, thanks to Joey Kamide for all his hard work.
  • VHSL All-State Teams: pending
  • VISAA’s All-State teams:
    • Division I All State Team with several Paul VI and Flint Hill players.  Player of the Year: Evan Justice– Collegiate School, a LHP from Richmond committed to NC State.
    • Division II All State Team.  Player of the year: Ethan Murray– Miller School, a Junior SS/RHP who sports a 4.0 and is an early commit to Duke.
    • Division III All State Team.   Player of the Year: Carter Davis– Blessed Sacrament-Huguenot, a C from Powhattan committed to St. Andrews Presbyterian College.
  • Maryland MIAA All-State teams (if exists): pending
  • All WCAC 2017: Jack Roberts, RHP/SS from St. Johns player of the year.
  • All MAC 2017 and all IAC 2017 also at Novabaseballmagazine.com’s site.

My master list of links used to cover HS Baseball:

Local and National High School Baseball Ranking Lists:

These National rankings are dominated by teams in Texas, Florida and California, as you might expect.  These teams can play nearly 40 games and usually have at least 15-20 under their belts before DC/MD/VA teams even get going.  So its somewhat of an accomplishment just to have a local team get some recognition.  In fact, any cold-weather state team appearing in these lists is pretty special.

Major Newspaper Links/Resources for following prep baseball around the state

  • Washington Post’s AllMetSports section with standings and schedule results.
  • The Baltimore Sun’s high school page has information on some of the programs outside the DC area mentioned in the Maryland section
  • InsideNova.com‘s coverage of high school sports, but has put limits on the number of stories you can read.
  • Richmond Times-Dispatch has a HS scoreboard.
  • Hampton Roads Pilot (Hampton Roads) has scores for teams in the Chesapeake/Norfolk/Va Beach area.
  • NovaBaseballMagazine: great coverage of Prep baseball in NorthernVirginia (thanks to Joe Antonellis for the heads up on this great new resource).

Local Newspaper Coverage, including links to many local papers covering smaller jurisdictions.

Non-newspaper Links for Local and National Prep Baseball Coverage

Good Twitter accounts to follow:

  • https://twitter.com/toddeboss/lists/prepbaseball: I maintain an open list at my twitter account via this link, which contains direct links to dozens of local resources (including all the below).  Way too many retweets from the travel team accounts especially, but its a good way to keep up with local ball.
  • https://twitter.com/PBRVirginiaDC: Prep Baseball Report VA/DC coverage
  • https://twitter.com/NVBaseballMag: NoVa Baseball Magazine
  • https://twitter.com/NoVAHSBB
  • https://twitter.com/DynamicBaseball

Written by Todd Boss

June 5th, 2017 at 9:43 am

Posted in Local Baseball

Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Prep Baseball Update #1 2016: DC/MD/VA District High School Tournament Report: 2016 post-season underway

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It has been a rainy spring season for local baseball teams, but the district tournament season is upon us.  Here’s the first of four posts we’ll do covering the High School baseball tournaments in the DC/MD/VA area.  Here’s the rough schedule of posting and what we’ll cover:

  • #1: DC/MD/VA District High School Tournament Report: post-season kickoff (this post).  Covers: MD regional kickoffs, VA district brackets, Private school tourney updates.  Usually publishes the week before Memorial day tournament finals.
  • #2: Maryland State Champs, Northern VA District Champs crowned.  Covers: MD state finals, VA district tourneys, VA regional brackets, DC regular season results.  Usually publishes after the Memorial Day weekend tournaments finish up.
    #3: Virginia Regional Results, DC Tourneys.  Covers: VA regional results, State brackets, DC tourney results.  Usually publishes the first week of June.
    #4: Final Prep Baseball Update: Virginia State Champions crowned.  Covers: VA state tourneys, recaps MD, DC, Private School results.  Publishes mid-June once the Va state tourney wraps up.

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.  NovaBaseballMagazine has done a great job keeping up conference results and has links to the conference tournaments under its “Standings” links.  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: Chantilly and Westfield are the 1/2 seeds; the other four teams in the district all are hovering around .500 for the year, including Oakton despite having a nationally-known recruit in Joe Rizzo.
  • 6-A Conference 6/Liberty: Madison and McLean are the 1/2 seeds as they were last year; Madison lost only one game locally this year and should cruise to the district title.
  • 6-A Conference 7/Potomac: West Springfield and Lake Braddock are the 1/2 seeds, with Annandale hovering.
  • 6-A Conference 8/ Cedar Run: Battlefield the clear dominant team in this small district and is the #1 seed in the tournament.

Previews: Its hard not to squint and predict a regional semi finals of Chantilly, Madison, West Springfield and Battlefield at this point; the question becomes when does Battlefield throw its unbeatable ace Jake Agnos.  If Battlefield can get to a regional final with Agnos on the hill, watch out.

In the 5-A division:

  • 5-A Conference 13/Capitol: Marshall is the clear #1 and the clear 5-A regional favorite, with just one loss all year.
  • 5-A Conference 14: Tuscarora, Stone Bridge and Briar Woods all stand at 5-2 in the district with one game remaining to play to jockey for seedings.
  • 5-A Conference 15: Mountain View and Potomac seem like the teams to beat again.
  • 5-A Conference 16: Halifax, Patrick Henry-Ashland are perennial favorites but this conference is not well covered by DC-area outlets.

Previews: Marshall seems like the team to beat; perennial power Stone Bridge lost its coach Sam Plank and some of its stars to rival new school Riverside, which is currently in Division 3-A while it grows into a 5-A/6-A size.

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, and Kettle Run is also putting together a great season.

Maryland

At this point, the Maryland State tournament is underway, with the play-in/round of 32 games played on 5/14/16.   Brackets here at the MPSAA website and direct links to the four State-wide brackets are linked directly below.  Schedule: Regional quarters are on 5/16, semis 5/18 and regional finals 5/20.  State Semis are 5/24 and the state finals are 5/27.

  • Maryland 4-A: Both finalists from 2015 are  “district” #1 seeds in this year’s draw (Severna Park and Gaithersburg); they’ll meet in the State Semis this year if form holds.  2014 state-finalist Sherwood is also a “district” #1 seed and sits on the other side of the bracket with the likes of Dulaney, Parksdale and Bowie.
  • Maryland 3-A: Looks like new blood in this year’s tourney: last year’s champ did not make Regionals, and 2014’s champ Reservoir is set to take on last year’s finalist Mt. Hebron in the first round.  Chesapeake and River Hill look like early favorites.
  • Maryland 2-A: Two-time defending 2-A champ Southern has their work cut out for them to three-peat.  Newly promoted Sparrows Point, 2014 finalist Parkside and last year’s runner’s up Eastern Tech also in the field.
  • Maryland 1-A:  (mostly smaller schools outside the DC area): Last year’s champ is in the field but is not a favorite to advance even out of its own district.

We usually discount the quality of Maryland public school baseball teams versus their Virginia counter parts … but I can’t help if a team like Gaithersburg isn’t better than the likes of Madison or Chantilly this year.

DC

  • DCIAA: the regular season runs through 5/17.  The District tournament quarters are on 5/19, semis 5/23 and the finals on 5/25.   Wilson may finally have some competition, as School Without Walls (SWW) was undefeated mid-way through conference play.
  • DCSAA: the 2016 tournament, if it will occur, has yet to be scheduled.  It does not look like it has actually been held since 2013.

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: No playoff brackets yet, but Spalding looks once again like the class of the MIAA Class A.  Standings here.
  • There’s a 2016 Maryland Private School Tournament scheduled for 5/30 at UMD; it should have some of the better private schools from Maryland, including the non-affiliated but perennial powerhouse Riverdale Baptist.  Details coming later.
  • VISAA: The VISAA playoff brackets were just announced: #1 seeds by the three classes were Paul VI, Greenbriar Christian and Southampton Academy.  Other local teams playing include Flint Hill, O’Connell, and the Potomac School in McLean.  Quarters 5/16, Semis 5/10 and finals 5/21/16.
  • WCAC: The WCAC is midway through its tournament; with semis and finals being held this week.  St. Johns won the regular season but the four top teams all advanced to the semis.
  • MAC: Flint Hill once again cruised to a regular season title.
  • IAC: no news yet on this smaller private DC-area conference.
  • PVAC: no news yet on this smaller private DC-area conference.

My master list of links used to cover HS Baseball:

Local and National High School Baseball Ranking Lists:

These National rankings are dominated by teams in Texas, Florida and California, as you might expect.  These teams can play nearly 40 games and usually have at least 15-20 under their belts before DC/MD/VA teams even get going.  So its somewhat of an accomplishment just to have a local team get some recognition.  In fact, any cold-weather state team appearing in these lists is pretty special.

Major Newspaper Links/Resources for following prep baseball around the state

  • Washington Post’s AllMetSports section with standings and schedule results.
  • The Baltimore Sun’s high school page has information on some of the programs outside the DC area mentioned in the Maryland section
  • InsideNova.com‘s coverage of high school sports, but has put limits on the number of stories you can read.
  • Richmond Times-Dispatch has a HS scoreboard.
  • Hampton Roads Pilot (Hampton Roads) has scores for teams in the Chesapeake/Norfolk/Va Beach area.
  • NovaBaseballMagazine: great coverage of Prep baseball in NorthernVirginia (thanks to Joe Antonellis for the heads up on this great new resource).

Local Newspaper Coverage, including links to many local papers covering smaller jurisdictions.

Non-newspaper Links for Local and National Prep Baseball Coverage

Good Twitter accounts to follow:

  • https://twitter.com/toddeboss/lists/prepbaseball: I maintain an open list at my twitter account via this link, which contains direct links to dozens of local resources (including all the below).  Way too many retweets from the travel team accounts especially, but its a good way to keep up with local ball.
  • https://twitter.com/PBRVirginiaDC: Prep Baseball Report VA/DC coverage
  • https://twitter.com/NVBaseballMag: NoVa Baseball Magazine
  • https://twitter.com/NoVAHSBB
  • https://twitter.com/DynamicBaseball

Written by Todd Boss

May 16th, 2016 at 8:38 am

Posted in Local Baseball

Tagged with , , ,