With the first month of the season complete – and with it all of those non-league contests, tipoff and holiday tournaments in the books – the real campaign now begins for girls and boys varsity high-school basketball teams.
The remaining six weeks of the schedules are games pretty much exclusively against district rivals.
In Concorde District play tonight (Jan. 4) the Madison Warhawks face the Centreville Wildcats in girls and boys action at 7:30 p.m. The boys are at home and the girls away. Also, the Oakton teams face Westfield tonight in Concorde clashes.
The Madison and Oakton boys warmed up for district play with 2-1 finishes in recent holiday-tournament action, while the Oakton girls went 2-0.
The district games are the first of the season for the Madison and Oakton squads. None of the six Concorde schools have yet to play any district games, so the slate is clean for each.
In Liberty District action Friday night, Jan. 5, the Marshall Statesmen play Herndon in girls and boys games and the two McLean Highlanders squads face Yorktown.
The Langley and Washington-Liberty girls are tied for first in the Liberty standings with 2-0 records.
The defending Liberty tournament champion Marshall boys are 2-1 in the standings, trailing the first-place Wakefield Warriors (2-0) entering Jan. 5 action.
The Marshall boys (11-2) defeated Langley, 54-32, in district play Jan. 2 as Jason Penn scored 22 points and made six threes and Omar Phillips had 16 points and seven boards.
The same night the Langley girls (12-1) routed Marshall, 60-21. Anya Rahman scored 15 and had six rebounds, Vicky Zawisza scored 14 and Peyton Daley scored 10 with six boards for Langley. Bri Borcherding added seven points, five boards and four steals.
The Langley girls finished 2-1 in the Oakton Holiday Classic, with Maddie Shamloo leading the way by scoring 42 points, having 21 rebounds and nine assists in the three games.
The girls and boys races for first place in the Concorde and Liberty district are expected to be hotly contested.
Teams that finish first in the regular-season district standings earn 6D North Region tournament playoff berths.
