January opens the most important portion of the winter sports seasons for local high-school teams.
Once schools restart play following recent snowy weather conditions, the majority of the remaining regular-season contests will be against district opponents, followed by postseason tournaments.
So far in girls and boys basketball, only a few teams have played any district games so far. At most, teams have played one or two.
From this point forward, teams often will play two games per week against district rivals, possibly more if inclement weather continues to postpone games.
With holiday tournaments concluded, preliminary contests — sometimes referred to as warmups — against non-league opponents are pretty much concluded.
The next seven games for the Lake Braddock Secondary School girls and boys teams, for example, will be against Patriot District rivals. Similar stretches of games will be the same for other Fairfax County basketball teams.
Three of the final four wrestling matches for the Fairfax Lions squad are against Patriot District teams.
Regular-season contests in some cases pretty much wrap up by the end of January, as postseason tournaments start early in February for all winter high-school sports.
Schedules, however, will be heavily weather-dependent.
