Twenty-two
shutouts

Stone Bridge had scored two points all season. On Thursday they won a game 14 to 0.

Thirty-nine games into Loudoun's first season. Twelve of them were played this week. Heritage and Riverside are five wins from five and Lightridge is four from four. The table is sorted by winning percentage, then by wins, then alphabetically. Loudoun has not published a tiebreaker and we are not inventing one.

Twelve games in four days

Every one of these is on the schedule page with its source named.

Stone Bridge's first

Stone Bridge began the season losing 36 to 0, and the only points the Bulldogs had scored by the middle of September were the two they took off Independence on the first of the month, in a 6 to 2 game. Three games, two points, eighty-three conceded.

On Thursday evening they hosted Loudoun County and won it 14 to 0. Stone Bridge scored more points in that one game than in the rest of the season put together, and they did not concede any.

That leaves Briar Woods and Park View as the two schools still waiting for a first win.

Twenty-two of thirty-nine

Loudoun has now played thirty-nine games of girls flag football. In twenty-two of them, one team finished with nothing. That is more than half the season so far, and it is the single most consistent feature of the record we have been keeping.

A shutout is two things at once. Somebody's defence held for forty-eight minutes, and somebody else went home without a score. Riverside have conceded twelve points across five games, which is the meanest line in the county. Heritage, Lightridge and Broad Run have each given up twenty-five. Broad Run's twenty-five is the odd one, because it belongs to a team sitting at two wins and three losses.

We are not going to tell you what the number means. It is a founding season, every programme in it is new, and there is nothing to compare it against yet, because nobody has kept this record before. What we can do is write it down, so that the second season has something to be measured against.

The two closest games are both Independence's

The nearest finish of the season is Independence 14, John Champe 12, on Tuesday. The second nearest is Independence 6, Stone Bridge 2, on the first of September. Independence won both, and they are four wins from five.

Three of those four wins came by seven points, by four, and by two. The fourth was Thursday's 14 to 0 at Potomac Falls, which is the largest margin Independence has managed all year and the first time they have shut anyone out.

Tomorrow

It is the first time schools from three Northern Virginia counties have met each other in this sport, as far as our record goes. Millbrook and Sherando come down from Frederick County and Colgan brings two squads from Prince William. We will not be in Leesburg for it, so if you are there and you have a result, a bracket photograph, or anything at all, we would be glad of it.

Loudoun's regular season picks up again on Tuesday, September 22 with five games, including Riverside against Rock Ridge on the neutral field at Dominion and Heritage away at Broad Run, which puts the county's meanest defence in front of one of its unbeaten teams.

Fairfax County opens on Tuesday, September 29, eleven days from now, with twenty-five schools. Chantilly's full season is on the Fairfax page, and the other twenty-four go up as their schools send them.

Send us a score

If you coach, run an athletics office, or you are a parent in the stands with the final on your phone, we would like it. It goes up free, with the school credited, and we correct anything wrong the same day. The form takes thirty seconds.

Earlier: Issue No. 4, Three left unbeaten · Issue No. 3, Five still unbeaten · Issue No. 2, All seventeen, on the field · Issue No. 1, The whole fall in one place.