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2008: the year in sports
If 2007 marked the year Battlefield transformed from up-and-comer to contender, then the Bobcats went from contender to powerhouse in 2008. In fact, in so many ways, Battlefield just missed out on a title more common at Brentsville District: champions.No athletic teams from Battlefield, Brentsville District and Stonewall Jackson captured a state crown in 2008. But handful of individuals came out with golds of their own.
Battlefield
The football Bobcats attracted major headlines for the second straight year by improving on their once-blemished 2007 regular season record with a perfect 10-0 mark in 2008.
No athletic team from the high school, which opened in the fall of 2004, had ever finished a season undefeated.
Unlike 2007, Battlefield did not have to claw back from multi-touchdown deficits too often. Cedar Run District offensive player of the year Adrian Ingram (1,273 yards, 17 touchdowns) led the way from the get-go by thrashing Potomac on opening day with a third down, 120-yard performance. The 41-0 win over the Panthers marked a turning point for the program as Potomac had handed the Bobcats their only loss before the playoffs one year earlier.
Leg injuries ended up plaguing Ingram during the 2008 campaign as he routinely carried the ball 25 or more times per outing. Yet that merely allowed the district to get a face full of the team’s No. 2 back, Gerald Khosa.
After a hobbled Ingram left the field in the second quarter on homecoming night against Liberty, Khosa earned his moment in the spotlight. Earning 173-yards and three-touchdowns, he helped bring the Bobcats back from a 20-14 third quarter deficit and propelled the host team to a 40-21 victory.
But just like 2007, the Bobcats hit a brick wall in the regional playoffs, once again losing to the state runner-up. An unlikely Osbourn team that amassed a 6-4 regular season and lost to Battlefield 25-17 on Oct. 3 showed shades of their 2006 state championship season. The Eagles came back from a four-point fourth quarter deficit Nov. 14 to topple the district champs 22-20.
“It was just so disappointing at the time that they’re not going to realize how successful [they have] been,” said Mark Cox, who once again earned honors as the Cedar Run District Coach of the Year.
The football team was not the only Battlefield squad to win districts and then exit unexpectedly in the regional playoffs.
On the baseball diamond, senior pitchers Matt Crouse and Evan Scott hurled their way to regular season and tournament wins in the Cedar Run Distrct with fastballs clocking in at around 90 mph.
Forest Park ended Battlefield’s season in the first round of regions, but Battlefield did have a big perk.
Scott became the first Battlefield player drafted by a major league baseball team as the Los Angeles Angels came knocking. He instead opted to hone his skills at James Madison University with former Battlefield teammate David Herbek.
Herbek actually made a splash back at the Bobcats’ park by returning with the Haymarket Senators Valley League Baseball team. His batting average was among the best in the league and launched the Senators to their first-ever post-season appearance.
Though the football and baseball teams often overwhelmed their opposition in the run-ups to regions, the boys basketball team crept there with the tried and true methods of pulling tournaments upsets.
The sub-.500 boys ended the regular season on a hot streak and fought Osbourn Park late in the fourth quarter before coming up just short in the regional final.
Battlefield exited in the first round of regions against powerhouse GW-Danville, though even their coach remarked to the Bobcats’ staff he was impressed by the intensity of the boys.
Three Battlefield teams did make it to states though and two ended up in the final round.
During the spring, the girls softball team set out to conquer and did just that with two district titles and a run through regions that ended up with Battlefield being an early favorite at states. Wins in the first two rounds paved the way to a showdown against Hickory, where girls were just one big hit away from overcoming a 4-2 deficit.
The same time in Chantilly, the girls soccer team redeemed itself after a regional championship loss in PKs to Woodbridge by running roughshod through the state tournament. Jessica Jewell and Sahar Aflaki provided a large chunk of the offense throughout the year while goalie Kristen Norkus did not allow a goal in the regional playoffs until Woodbridge came to town.
Against Robinson in the state finals, Battlefield led 1-0 for all of a few seconds before the Rams answered. It took overtime for a winner to be decided, but Robinson’s defense proved to be too tough after the Rams took a decisive 2-1 lead, one day after Battlefield seniors walked across the graduation stage at Nissan Pavilion.
While the football, baseball, softball, girls soccer and golf teams all came up short in their run to states, one battling Bobcat brought back the bacon.
Junior Beau Martino became the first athlete in school history to earn a first-place title at states as the 103-pound wrestler went undefeated through the varsity wrestling post-season en route to winning the gold. Senior track runner Eric Hoepker followed suite that spring with a win the 800-meter run.
Brentsville
Spring 2008 turned out to be triumphant and torturous for Brentsville District. The triumph came as four teams all plowed their way to Northwestern District titles.
Brentsville’s baseball sluggers mounted by far and away their best showing since the team’s runner-up finish at states a decade earlier as a Group A squad. Five years into Group AA status, the senior-heavy boys sure did seem to have a flair for the dramatic.
Tiger fans gathered in Nokesville routinely had their hearts racing late in the season as their team would be trailing by three, four, five, heck, even six and seven runs in the late innings.
Time and time again, Brentsville pulled off titanic comebacks that would end with teammates pouring out of the dugout and toward home plate in victory.
But it was ultimately that penchant for waiting until late in the game before rallying that led to the Tigers’ demise in the state quarterfinals.
Just a foul ball’s hit away on the softball field, the girls preferred consistency of a different suite: beatdowns.
The softball team mirrored their counterparts at Battlefield in that they had it all: two outstanding pitchers in Devon Hileman and Grace Nordon and a starting lineup where every single batter could be a threat.
They won the district regular-season and tournament titles with a breeze but were knocked out of the playoffs in the regional semi-finals at a play-at-the-plate where the Loudoun County center-fielder gunned out the Tigers’ tying run in the bottom of the seventh to close the game and Brentsville’s season.
On the soccer field, the boys mounted a surprise post-season comeback with an upset district title and a second-place showing in regions, which qualified them for states. The girls team went undefeated through the regular season but bowed out after successive losses in the district tournament title and regional opener.
The girls basketball team meanwhile, put on its most impressive showing ever by going undefeated in the district during the season and post-season and winning in regions too, earning their first trip to states. Though they lost, exiting seniors Kimmy Hopkins and Aly Jacobson earned all-area titles and coach Eugene Baltimore, who retired after the season ended, took in Coach of the Year honors. Hopkins won her second Player of the Year title for districts.
Speaking of close calls, the cheerleading squad won districts yet again and attempted to repeat its state title, but came up just short at the championship match this year with a none-the-less impressive third place finish.
Though none of the sports ultimately captured the Holy Grail of high school sports, a couple individuals took it upon themselves to get the job done.
Then-junior Alex Morress set a state swimming record in the 100-yard breaststroke with a time of 0:57.79. But his gold medal day did not end there as he, Michael Hughes, Jordan DeGayner and Matt Smith teamed up for a first-place title in the 200-yard medley relay. The boys team finished third place overall.
Danyelle Kent-Robinson added another state title to her already-stellar career with a run in the 100-meter hurdles of 15.12 seconds during the outdoor track season finale. She came up just shy of a trifecta with silvers in the 300-meter hurdles and high jump.
Stonewall Jackson
Stonewall Jackson said goodbye two last year to two NCAA Div.-I stars and hello to some more up-and-comers in 2008.
The leading football and basketball scorers in school history both crossed the stage in June as Ryan Williams (Virginia Tech) and Gwen Washington (Eastern Tennessee) donned the burgundy-and-gold one last time.
Like coach Baltimore at Brentsville, football coach Loren Johnson announced his exit from Stonewall after his star player Williams played his final game. The Raider football team had even more problems to deal with when Williams’ successor and backfield teammate Damien Thigpen succumbed to injury during the summer and missed the first several games of the season.
It was not until Thigpen’s return that the Raiders even chalked up a win. Stonewall went on to post two more victories, including homecoming, but without either Williams or the University of Tennessee-bound Thigpen to rely on in 2009, the Raiders will have some serious restructuring to do on the field.
Thigpen’s glory has not just been on the football field; he is also a two-time state track winner. At the 2008 outdoor track championship, he added his second gold by winning the 300-meter hurdles.
The Stonewall Jackson varsity girls basketball team must collectively cringe when they think back about what could have been and should have been the state-winning year of 2008.
Similar to the Battlefield football team, the Raiders mounted a perfect regular season. And somehow, some way, a team they beat in soundly during that undefeated run came back to haunt them in regions.
Nothing said dominance in 2008 like the utterly ridiculous victory margins the Lady Raiders stacked up against their district opponents. Fifty-point wins became more of benchmarks than blowouts.
A 21-0 season however was mired in the regional semi-finals as Potomac’s Lynetta Kizer put back a rebound for a basket with 0.3 seconds on the board to force the Raiders out early with a 60-59 loss.
“It was just like, ‘I’ve got to make it. I’ve got to make it,’” said Kizer after the game.
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