Three unbeaten,
and Monday

Heritage and Riverside have played twelve games between them this season and have not lost one. On Monday evening they play each other.

Forty-eight games into Loudoun's first season, plus a tournament that does not count toward any of it. Nine regular season games were played this week and all nine are in. The table is sorted by winning percentage, then by wins, then alphabetically. Loudoun has not published a tiebreaker and we are not inventing one.

Saturday's tournament games are not in this table. They are kept separately, on the championship page, because they were not part of anybody's league season.

This week

Every result here is on the schedule page with its source named.

One point

Lightridge went to Independence on Thursday and won it 7 to 6. That is the closest game Loudoun has played this season, and there is a reasonable argument it is the best one.

Lightridge had won their first four by 21, by 19, by 21 and by 41. They had not been held under twenty points by anyone. On Thursday, five days after winning the county's first tournament without losing a game, they scored seven and needed all of them.

The three closest games of the season have now all been Independence's: this one, the 14 to 12 against John Champe on the fifteenth, and the 6 to 2 against Stone Bridge on the first of September. Independence won two of the three and lost this one. They have also not scored more than fourteen points in any game they have played, and have not given up more than fourteen either, which is its own kind of consistency.

Saturday, in case you missed it

Lightridge won the NOVA Girls Flag Championship at Heritage on the nineteenth, six games out of six in a single day. They took Pool A, beat Independence 31 to 0 in the quarterfinal, Riverside 28 to 12 in the semifinal, and Colgan Blue of Prince William 12 to 6 in the final on the stadium field. Across the day they scored 147 and gave up 32.

Sixteen teams from three counties played thirty-one games. Heritage, hosting, went out in the quarterfinals to Woodgrove. Riverside drew one and lost one in pool play and still made the semifinal. Every pool, every game and the full bracket are here, from the scoresheet Heritage kept on the day.

Monday

Two unbeaten teams have met three times already this season, but never this far in. The best either side had brought to one of those games before was three wins and no losses. On Monday it is six and six.

The rest of the evening: Loudoun County at Broad Run, Park View at Potomac Falls, Woodgrove at Tuscarora, and Rock Ridge at Dominion. Then Briar Woods at Stone Bridge on Tuesday at 7:00, which is the only seven o'clock start on the Loudoun calendar.

Twenty-six of forty-eight

Twenty-six of the forty-eight games played in Loudoun this season have ended with one team held scoreless. That was twenty-two of thirty-nine a week ago. Four of this week's nine finished that way.

We are still 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 measure it against. We write it down so that next year there is.

Fairfax opens Tuesday

Fairfax County starts on Tuesday, September 29, with twenty-five schools playing on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. That is more schools than Loudoun has, arriving all at once, four days from now. Chantilly's full season is on the Fairfax page and the other twenty-four go up as their schools send them. If you work in a Fairfax athletics office and you have a schedule, we would take it today.

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. 5, Twenty-two shutouts · 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.