sports

For first time in 30 years, two Marymount teams won conference titles on same day

By Matt Blitz
1/3

For the first time in three decades, two Marymount University teams won their conference titles on the same day with both earning a trip to their respective NCAA tournaments.

On Saturday, Nov. 5, Marymount’s women’s volleyball team and the men’s soccer team each won the NCAA Division III Atlantic East Conference championship.

It was a bit of sports history for the small Catholic university on N. Glebe Road, marking the first time since 1992 that two Marymount teams won such big matches on the same day. Both are now headed to their NCAA tournaments to vie for a national championship.

For the volleyball team, this is the third time in five seasons and the first such trip since 2019. The program has been around since 1981, with head coach Beth Ann Wilson at the helm for the last 30 of those years.

The team will head about an hour away to play the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg on Thursday in the opening round of the national tournament, the program learned on Monday afternoon.

This season has been a true turnaround for the Marymount men’s soccer team. It’s the first time in its 33-year history that it won more games than it lost in a season, wrapped up a conference championship, and made the NCAA tournament.

The men’s soccer team will also make their way to Mary Washington and Fredericksburg for their tournament game, set to play Eastern University on Saturday in the first round.

“We’re so proud of our men’s soccer and women’s volleyball team for winning the Atlantic East Conference and earning automatic bids into the NCAA Tournament on Saturday,” Marymount Director of Athletics Jill McCabe tells ARLnow. “For men’s soccer to win the first conference title in program history in front of an amazing home crowd, it was truly a special moment for Marymount University. Our women’s volleyball team went on the road to beat a team they had lost to just over two weeks ago to get back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019.”

Marymount University has 22 varsity-level sports teams, including men’s and women’s wrestling, which was just added this past spring. They all compete in NCAA Division III, which typically includes smaller schools and provides no athletic scholarships — though student athletes are eligible for other types of scholarships.

The university, meanwhile, is developing plans to build a new sports facility on a piece of county-owned land near campus. Before anything is built, however, it will need to go through a formal review process. Marymount is planning to hold an informational meeting on Nov. 29 to discuss the plan with the community.

Marymount University proposes new athletic facilities on county land

By Jo DeVoe
1/6

(Updated 9:55 p.m.) Marymount University is developing plans to build a new sports facility on an embattled parcel of county property near its campus.

Currently, the property at 26th Street N. and Old Dominion Drive, in the Old Dominion neighborhood, is home to a temporary road salt storage “dome” and a parking lot used for mulch distribution. In 2019, despite opposition from some neighbors, the county demolished a roughly 90-year-old water storage tank, repurposed for road salt, which was on the brink of collapse.

The tank saga came a few years after the county proposed and later nixed plans to relocate Fire Station 8 from Langston Blvd to the Old Dominion neighborhood.

Now, Marymount University, which was recently ranked for the first time as a national university and is showing other signs of growth — including higher enrollment rates, new softball and wrestling teams and new academic majors — is trying its hand at redeveloping the site.

The school, which has its main campus across from the county property and an additional presence in Ballston, first put forward a plan for the property two years ago. It proposes to build a sports field, a children’s playground and an enhanced walking trails to Missionhurst Preserve, according to a map on the university’s website.

In addition, it would replace the existing temporary salt dome with a new, solar-powered one, along with a mulch area.

A little less than a year ago, it also put forward a proposal to build new diamond fields where the Washington-Liberty High School baseball diamond in Quincy Park and the softball diamond on school property are. Since then, it has been in talks with W-L, Arlington Public Schools and the Arlington Department of Parks and Recreation.

Marymount has advertised an informational meeting on this proposal, scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 29.

The university said in a statement to ARLnow that the session acts on a suggestion from Arlington County Manager Mark Schwartz to “build consensus among community members and inform them of our proposed plans to create a generational green space for Arlington at 26th Street N. and Old Dominion Drive that would improve and expand recreational opportunities for the County’s residents.”

It added that the forthcoming meeting also acts on a suggestion from a neighborhood association to meet with the three impacted neighborhood groups together. Marymount says it notified and invited Schwartz and the Arlington County Board to the meeting.

“We have put a great deal of thought and consideration into both projects, but these are proposals,” the university said. “We are discussing them with the neighborhood associations to receive their feedback after repeated attempts were made to communicate with the County about them.”

But Arlington County released a statement this afternoon (Monday) to clarify it has not endorsed the project.

“The County and APS received notice of Marymount’s November 29 Information Session at the same time Marymount informed the general public,” the statement reads. “The County and APS are not associated with or participating in the November 29 Information Session and do not sanction the materials or proposals presented by Marymount University.”

Per the statement, members of the Arlington County Board and the School Board have met with Marymount over the last year, at the university’s request, to hear the proposed concepts.

“At those meetings, County and APS staff asked clarifying questions but no decision was reached,” the county said. “At no time did County or APS staff indicate that these proposed facilities were feasible or acceptable.”

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Two pickleball-loving locals wants the sport to take over Iceland

By Matt Blitz
Arlington’s pickleball community hosted players from Iceland at the Walter Reed Community Center (photo courtesy of Ruth Ellis)

If conquering Arlington wasn’t enough, pickleball is now headed to Iceland thanks to two locals.

This past weekend, Arlington-based pickleball coaches Ruth Ellis and Helen White hosted a group of Icelandic tennis players at the Walter Reed Community Center to kick start a collaboration between Arlington’s pickleball community and Tennishöllin, a tennis club in Kopavógur, Iceland.

In a return volley, Ellis and White are set to head to Kopavógur next month to lead several pickleball workshops for the general public there.

The hope is to start a pickleball craze in Iceland, much like what’s happened here in Arlington.

“So many people I’m meeting have been to Iceland. So, there’s a lot of sport tourism possibilities for a place like Iceland,” Helen White, a leader in Arlington’s pickleball community and a local ambassador for the sport, told ARLnow. “Yes, you want to see the country, but if you’re a pickleball player, you also want to play with local pickleball players.”

The idea for the collaboration with the tennis club in Kopavógur came from Ellis, who was born in Iceland and goes back often to visit family. She’s an avid pickleball player and, while thinking about her next trip home, realized that it could be tough for her to find a game.

“I was trying to see if I could play pickleball while I was there, and there’s nobody playing there,” said Ellis, who actually lives in D.C. but plays mostly in Arlington. “There’s no active pickleball scene in Iceland at the moment. To me, that looked like a situation that needed to be remedied.”

While it was popular prior to the pandemic, pickleball has boomed in Arlington in recent years. Courts across the county are often full, with residents asking for more. The Department of Parks and Recreation has dedicated $2 million to build more courts and restripe tennis courts, though it might take some time before those are ready for a match.

However, not everyone loves the game. The sound of the ball hitting the paddle — the infamous pickleball pop — can be loud, so much so that the county shut down a court this summer because the pop sound was annoying the neighbors.

While the game has continued to grow in Arlington and the United States as a whole — with sports stars buying newly-formed professional teams — in Iceland tennis remains the favored paddle sport. But Ellis wants to change that.

She reached out to White, who was game for the project. Then, after emailing “dozens” of Icelanders, Ellis was put in touch with a woman who worked at the U.S. Embassy in Iceland. In turn, that person paired Ellis with the owners of Tennishöllin.

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Serena Williams appears to have paid a visit to El Pollo Rico in Va. Square this weekend

By Matt Blitz
El Pollo Rico (file photo)

Tennis legend Serena Williams was apparently served up some Peruvian chicken at Virginia Square’s El Pollo Rico this past weekend.

An Instagram story posted on Williams’ account on Sunday (July 31) afternoon shows her inside of the local Peruvian chicken spot on N. Kenmore Street getting served up a heaping portion of chicken and rice.

The IG story was first spotted and tweeted by local restaurant and bar influencer Barred in DC.

Williams is in town to support her equally-famous sister Venus, who is playing in the Citi Open in D.C. tonight. Serena surprised onlookers yesterday when she showed up on the Rock Creek Park courts to practice with her sister.

It’s unclear what lead her to El Pollo Rico, though Barred in DC guesses that her husband Alexis Ohanian (co-founder of Reddit and a UVA alum) may have had something to do with it.

ARLnow reached out to the restaurant this morning, but the manager there said he was unaware of the sports great stopping by. ARLnow also emailed owner Victor Solano but has yet to hear back as of publication.

Serena did some sightseeing in the District over the weekend as well, posting videos of her scootering around while checking out the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial in the rain. It appears that McLean resident Mark Ein, who runs the Citi Open, was also with her.

ARLnow has reached out to Ein and his representatives to see if perhaps he’s the one who suggested the well-known local spot, but also has yet to hear back.

This isn’t El Pollo Rico’s first brush with fame. The late Anthony Bourdain featured the restaurant on his Travel Channel show “No Reservations” back in 2009.

This unassuming Peruvian chicken eatery is located on a side street off of Fairfax Drive and in the back of a low-slung building. It opened in 1988 and has continued to be a popular spot since.

An Arlington Little League team hits and pitches its way to states and into local history

By Matt Blitz
1/3

An Arlington Little League team has made the state tournament, becoming one of few teams to have done so in Arlington history.

This past Fourth of July weekend, the Arlington Little League National 5070 All-Stars won the District 4 championship tournament, besting teams from across the region including Vienna and McLean. In Sunday’s championship game, the team of 14 players, ages 12 and 13 years old, defeated the Alexandria Little League All-Star team. They won by a score of 10 to 5.

The next step is the Virginia state tournament, to be held in Henrico just outside of Richmond, with their first game scheduled for this Friday. The coaches believe this is only the third team in Arlington Little League history to advance to states.

Both players and coaches told ARLnow that what made this team special was everyone’s dedication and buy-in.

“All 14 [players] bought into the team aspect of what’s best for the team as opposed to what’s best for them as an individual,” Manager Mark Nersasian told ARLnow. “We got contributions from top to bottom [of the roster].”

Thirteen-year-old Nate Moseley, who pitches and plays first base for the team and attends Dorothy Hamm Middle School, said that Nersasian and the other coaches often reiterate this concept.

“[The coaches] always tells us that we need players who play for the team name on the front, not the [last name] on the back,” he said.

That task was even more complicated by the fact the team has only been together for a few weeks. This is an all-star team, picked from more than 100 players across nine Arlington Little League teams. The team was selected, in large part, by their teammates and fellow Arlington Little Leaguers, with players voting on who they think should make up the squad. Coaches also contributed to the selection of the roster.

As expected, the players proved themselves to be some of the best ball players in Arlington. Assistant coach Keith Stone says the blended roster can sometimes be a challenge when dividing up playing time, but that wasn’t the case for this group of middle-school-aged athletes.

“Most of them were the best players on their regular team. They got brought to this [team] and they may only get to bat one time or barely get to play in the field. They all bought into the collective good for the team,” Stone said. “For 12 and 13-year-olds, that’s not always the easiest thing to do.”

This Arlington Little League team isn’t in the same age group as those that are on ESPN every year. This team is a little bit older, mostly comprised of 13-year-olds, as opposed to 10, 11, and 12-year-olds. Therefore, the Arlington Little League team plays on fields that are larger, have longer base paths, and pitch further away.

Dylan Stone, a shortstop and pitcher, has been playing baseball in Arlington since he was four years old. He’s now 13 and attends Williamsburg Middle School. What he loves most about playing in Arlington Little League is being able to “play with friends and the competition.”

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Eye-tracking camera from Arlington startup brings sports fans new views

By Mavis Chan

Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups, founders, and other local technology news. Monday Properties is proudly featuring 1515 Wilson Blvd in Rosslyn. 

Longtime Arlington resident Jay Hedley flew A-10 fighter jets for 12 years in the Maryland Air National Guard.

When flying missions, his plane would track and record what he could see in front of him, as well as the targeting of missiles using a heads-up display. He and other pilots would review the video footage together after flying a mission to debrief.

“So then the idea came,” he said, “why don’t we train athletes the same way we use technology like this from the jet?”

So he founded HeadVantage, which equips athletes with mini cameras and eye-tracking technology. The HeadVantage camera can be fitted under the bill of a baseball cap and track the eye movements of the wearer. It can also measure the diameter of the wearer’s pupils a hundred times per second, Hedley said.

Apart from tracking eye movements, the camera also records high-definition, stabilized video footage that can be streamed live and shown on TV.

“One way you can think of it is, where GoPro can’t go,” said Hedley, distinguishing HeadVantage from the popular action camera brand.

The HeadVantage camera is fitted into a pair of golf glasses (via SportsTech)

Because of the camera’s eye-tracking and streaming abilities, HeadVantage can provide unique content to sports fans, said Jenna Kurath, the head of Comcast NBCU SportsTech.

“To be able to see it from the perspective of the athlete, to get into the mind of the athlete through the eye-tracking of those split-second decisions that they’re making,” she said, “this is going to bring new fan-engagement content to the forefront.”

With this camera, sports commentators will be able to analyze an athlete’s performance from their viewpoint.

“Oftentimes our commentators will do the replay and say, ‘How did they do this?'” Kurath said. “Now this is the ability to kind of see it through the eyes of the athlete to really get a little bit more into their mind.”

Arlington-based HeadVantage was selected as part of Comcast NBCUniversal’s SportsTech Accelerator in 2022, a program that connected 10 startups with different program partners, such as NBC Sports, World Wrestling Entertainment and NASCAR. HeadVantage was chosen from among over 800 applicants around the world, according to a news release from NBCUniversal.

Since joining the program, HeadVantage has been prototyping the camera to be used in golf, fitting it in golfers’ glasses.

Instructors in NBC Sports’ golf shows, such as School of Golf‘s Martin Hall and others in the company’s subscribers-only GolfPass content, have used HeadVantage cameras, said Kurath, who also ran the startup program. The camera will be used in a few celebrity golf tournaments in the summer, she noted.

Founder Jay Hedley stands at the HeadVantage station at a Comcast NBCUniversal SportsTech Accelerator event (courtesy photo)

Hedley founded the startup in 2020, according to his LinkedIn page. Currently, his main customer is NBC Sports and his main goal for HeadVantage this year is to get the camera used in NBC golf coverage.

“I’d love to get embedded in NBC golf this year, maybe with baseball this year,” Hedley said, “So baseball and golf will be the two sports we’d focus on this year.”

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Morning Notes

By ARLnow.com
Around Rosslyn before the storms (staff photo by Jay Westcott)

Yorktown High Jumper Sets Record — “Led by two individual champions, the Yorktown Patriots finished third in the recent Virginia High School League’s Class 6 girls outdoor state track and field championships… The Patriots’ individual-event winners were Viktorie Klepetkova in the high jump for the second year in a row, but this time with a school and meet-record leap of 5-feet, 11-inches, and Anna Corcoran in the 800-meters.” [Sun Gazette]

Arlington on CBS Evening News — “The ‘walking school bus’ is helping both kids and senior citizens start the day off right. Once a week, seniors walk with students to school in Arlington, Virginia. Jan Crawford shares more.” [CBS News]

Born on Bridge, Straddled Still — “You’ve known folks born in Arlington, and you’ve known some born in D.C. But have you known anyone born in between? That is to say, born on Key Bridge? Paul Mclain, 65, recently retired as an academic assistant in the Duke University Slavic and Eurasian Studies Department, can claim such citizenship limbo. And it has caused him hassles as an adult.” [Falls Church News-Press]

Barrelling Through the I-395 Barrels — From Dave Statter: “Watch: Bad day for the barrels. At 9:40 this morning one driver decided to blaze their own trail right through them.” [Twitter]

It’s Monday — Humid and partly cloudy throughout the day. Storms possible later in the afternoon and overnight. High of 86 and low of 71. Sunrise at 5:44 am and sunset at 8:36 pm. [Weather.gov]

Arlington high school teams to compete in national Ultimate Frisbee tournament

By Mavis Chan
1/2

Both the boys and girls Ultimate Frisbee teams from H-B Woodlawn and Washington-Liberty High School are set to compete in the high school national tournament today and tomorrow (Saturday).

The High School National Invite tournament is set to be held in Richmond. This is the first time the organizers Ultiworld and Competitive Ultimate Training have held the tournament since the pandemic, according to a news release.

For this year’s tournament, 16 boys teams and 15 girls teams are set to attend, according to its website. Over the weekend, the four teams from Arlington are set to play against other high school teams from New Jersey, Utah and Oregon among other states.

Currently, Washington-Liberty Open and H-B Woodlawn Open — which were both formerly boys teams but are open to any players — were ranked 14th and 16th respectively by Ultiworld in the boys division, while H-B Woodlawn Gxrls and Washington-Liberty Gxrls were ranked 19th and 20th respectively in the girls division, according to the latest power ranking list published.

https://twitter.com/HBVarsityGirls/status/1525462695683796993

Among the four Arlington teams, only Washington-Liberty Gxrls has not been to previous national tournaments. MJ Muskovitz, a senior and the team’s captain, said the invite was “a huge surprise.”

Since almost half of her team was new, Muskovitz thought they were still “trying to build up the base of play and recruit more players” for this year, she told ARLnow.

“I got to read out the email [from the organizer] that we got to the rest of the team, it was a huge shock because we did not expect to be going to nationals,” Muskovitz said.

As her team was still focused on strengthening team bonds and developing the new players’ fundamental skills such as throwing, the members’ expectations weren’t “necessarily too high,” Muskovitz said.

“We hope to gain a new experience for our players,” she said. “We’re also looking to push our team more into a national spotlight.”

On the other hand, Coach Jay Boyle of H-B Woodlawn’s boys team hoped his squad could “make the upper bracket.” Although he was not the coach at the time, H-B Woodlawn Open participated in the national tournament in 2018.

In preparing for the tournament, Boyle’s team has been lifting weights, training three days a week over the winter, in addition to reviewing video footage of other teams, he added. Throughout the season, the team has held practices five days a week at times.

“It’s exciting, we think that we deserve the spot, we think of ourselves as a team that is competitive nationally,” Boyle said.

Pickleball pop peeves particular people, prompting park pilot program

By Matt Blitz
1/4

(Updated at 5:15 p.m.) The loud pop sound produced by a pickleball hitting a paddle has led to the closing of a popular court at Glebe Road Park.

A new pilot program that began last month at the North Arlington park is temporarily closing a stand-alone outdoor pickleball court through the majority of the spring and summer.

As a replacement, the tennis court next to it is now striped to create two additional pickleball courts. With the change, there are now two lighted multi-purpose tennis/pickleball courts and one lighted tennis court at Glebe Road Park. The park’s hours also have been adjusted, with the lights now shutting off at 10 p.m. instead of 11 p.m.

The reason for these changes is that the pop of pickleball — an increasingly popular sport — is bothersome some nearby neighbors in the Old Glebe community.

“One of the issues with pickleball is complaints of the popping noise the paddle makes when it hits the ball,” Martha Holland, a spokesperson for the Arlington Department of Parks and Recreation, tells ARLnow. “These concerns are not unique to Arlington but are prevalent in many communities nationwide. Many jurisdictions are grappling with finding the balance [given] the growth in pickleball.”

“These concerns were present before the COVID-19 pandemic,” Holland added. “However, the increase in play on the dedicated pickleball court at Glebe Road Park during COVID-19 has exacerbated the situation.”

The pilot program is set to run until September 6 and, at that point, the county will determine next steps.

“We will be checking in with the community (neighbors and court users) a couple times during the pilot to get feedback,” Holland wrote. “We hope to mitigate the sound issues by moving pickleball to the tennis courts.”

It’s no secret that pickleball’s popularity has surged over the last two years, due in part to it being a relatively low-impact social sport that allows players to stay within a relatively safe distance from one another.

This has, in turn led Arlington County to increase the number of courts available for pickleball.

But it also has caused some challenges. For one, there’s a limited number of available court space in the county. Back in November, county officials expressed some frustration that pickleball players were going rogue and unilaterally marking off pickleball boundaries on existing tennis and basketball courts.

At Glebe Road Park, the re-striping of a tennis court for pickleball hasn’t sat well with everyone vying for a share of that prime concrete real estate.

Helen White, part of the Arlington Pickleball Club‘s leadership team, says she’s heard from members that they’ve been “bullied” by tennis players when using the courts.

There is a county-run reservation system, allowing residents to book one of the tennis courts in 60 or 90 minute increments at $10 an hour. However, with many spots open, it’s unclear how much the system is actually utilized.

Then, there’s the noise of ball meeting paddle.

It was a single household that first brought a noise concerns to the county’s attention in August 2020, Arlington’s Director of Constituent Services Ben Aiken confirms to ARLnow. As time went on, though, more households complained to the county about the popping noise, Aiken says.

There was even talk of a petition, supposedly signed by about 20 households all living near the park on N. Old Glebe Road, though Aiken tells ARLnow that he has yet to receive a formal petition and is not aware of one circulating in the community.

ARLnow attempted to reach out to the homeowner who initially complained to the county, but they declined to speak for this story.

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The supposed inventor of baseball is buried at Arlington National Cemetery

By Matt Blitz
1/4

Up the hill from John F. Kennedy’s grave and behind Arlington House on the western side of Arlington National Cemetery lies the purported inventor of America’s pastime.

The former Union Army General Abner Doubleday is interred in section 1, laid to permanent rest there nearly 130 years ago. He’s one of more than a hundred Union generals that are buried at Arlington National Cemetery. While it’s his accomplishments during the Civil War that led him here, history remembers Doubleday much more for his perceived contributions to the game of baseball.

“I’m a big baseball fan. When I was growing up in the 1960s, the common view among the public was that this guy named Doubleday invented it,” says George Dodge, former Arlington Historical Society president and author of a book about the history of Arlington National Cemetery. “But that’s largely been completely discredited.”

Doubleday, a New York native, had a lifetime full of military experience. He was an officer in the Mexican War, fought in the Seminole War, and actually commended the gunners that fired the Civil War’s first shots at Fort Sumter. During the Civil War, he also saw action at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Bull Run, and Gettysburg.

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It was at Gettysburg where Doubleday was given command of the corps, when another general was killed in action, that helped to secure high ground. This ultimately led to the Union’s victory at the famed battle and likely turned the tide of the war.

“He has to be given some credit for that and I don’t think he does,” says Dodge.

After the war, he worked to help formerly enslaved people transition to a life of freedom, secure patents for San Francisco’s cable car system, and led a religious group devoted to spiritualism. Doubleday died in 1893 in New Jersey.

But before all of that, he apparently — according to legend — invented baseball.

The story goes that, while living in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839, a 20-year-old Doubleday drew a diamond in the dust and declared this was for a new game he called “base ball.” Along with a 1871 request for baseball-like equipment, this was enough proof for some that Doubleday invented baseball.

And, for the better part of the 20th century, this narrative existed — and, to some extent, still to this day.

Over the last several decades, however, historians have proven that Doubleday likely didn’t invent baseball.

The tale of him drawing a diamond in the dust was only first recounted via letter in 1905, more than 60 years after the fact, to the Mills Commission, a group that had been tasked to determine the origins of the great American game of baseball.

The letter was written by a man named Abner Graves who claimed he was there that day, but Graves would have only been 5 years old at the time. Additionally, it was unlikely that Doubleday was even in Cooperstown at the time. He was a cadet at West Point in 1839 and, even if he had returned home to see family, his family had moved to another village.

“They were looking for even the flimsiest of proof that [baseball] originated here in the United States,” says Dodge.

The more likely reason that this myth exists is that Doubleday represented a home run candidate — a respected Union Army general buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

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Oakridge Elementary students to cheer on Capitals ahead of playoffs

By Brandi Bottalico
Capitals practice at MedStar Capitals Iceplex (via Monumental Sports and Entertainment)

Oakridge Elementary will get to cheer on the Washington Capitals heading into the playoffs.

More than 280 third through fifth grade students will participate in a pep rally at the Arlington Ridge school tomorrow (Friday), just days before teams begin facing off for the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

The event, dubbed “Soar to the Playoffs,” is being organized by the Caps and sponsored by Boeing, which has its D.C. headquarters in nearby Crystal City. The event will run from noon to 1 p.m. and feature street hockey, as well as an appearance from Caps mascot Slapshot.

As the season winds down and playoff matchups are firming up, there’s news swirling around Alexander Ovechkin’s injury and ability to start in the playoffs. He sat out of Tuesday’s game against the New York Islanders. The team is set to play the Islanders again tonight at 7 p.m. on Long Island.

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