A strategy of starting fast helped the Potomac School Panthers bring home a third straight boys state cross-country championship.
The Panthers won the Division I private-school crown last Thursday (Nov. ) with 63 points on the 5,000-meter Panorama Farms course near Charlottesville. Saint John Paul the Great Catholic High School in Dumfries was second with 78.
The Potomac School Panthers girls cross-country team last Thursday (Nov. 7) placed second in Virginia’s Division I private-school competition on the 5,000-meter Panorama Farms course near Charlottesville.
The Collegiate School of Richmond won the high-school meet with 49 points. Potomac School had 98.
Championship seasons ended for the Potomac School Panthers girls and boys high-school soccer teams with recent semifinal losses in private-school state-tournament action.
The No. 3-seeded and defending champion girls (12-5) lost to the host and No. 2 seed Bishop O’Connell Knights, 2-0, in the four-team Northern Virginia Independent Schools State Invitational.
Seven years after its founding, a small, four-team girls soccer tournament remains the same size but has significantly grown in stature.
The event is the Northern Virginia Independent Schools State Invitational, held for teams that play in the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference and the Independent School League.
The Potomac School Panthers have brought home both regular-season and conference-tournament titles in boys soccer.
And now, players and coaches have their eyes on a possible state crown.
This season the Division I private-school state football playoffs will not include the Flint Hill Huskies or Potomac School Panthers.
The overall records of the high-school teams were not good enough to earn one of the four berths. Potomac School finished 5-4 and Flint Hill 1-8.
With the postseason under way, the Potomac School Panthers are in a familiar place, having captured one soccer-tournament crown and looking to defend their title in another.
On Friday (Nov. 1), the second-seeded girls high-school team won the Independent School League’s AA Division tourney for the third straight time with a 2-1 overtime victory over top seed Georgetown Day in the championship match at Episcopal High School in Alexandria.
It’s a tall order, but the Potomac School Panthers hope to gain a state football playoff berth with a big win in the team’s final regular-season game.
To do so, the Panthers (5-3) have to defeat the host North Cross Raiders (7-1) of Roanoke Nov. 2 at noon, then get some help.
Just months after departing as boys head basketball coach at Potomac School, Levi Franklin will be back on the bench — on the other side of the Potomac — this winter.
Franklin recently was hired as the head coach of the MacArthur Mammoths’ public-school boys team in D.C. He will remain at Potomac School as a math teacher and defensive coordinator with the varsity football team.
This year, the Potomac School Panthers want to finish the job and win the boys Mid-Atlantic Athletic Conference boys soccer tournament.
As they are this fall, the Panthers also were the top seed in the 2023 event as a result of winning the regular-season title, but lost badly, 5-2, to Sidwell Friends in the high-school tourney-championship match.
