Head to head,
then a coin flip

A place in the Loudoun County semifinals can come down to a coin toss. Nobody had published that until this week, and we only went looking because a coach asked us.

Sixty-one games into Loudoun's first season, with twelve still to play. Six were played on Thursday and all six are in. The table is sorted by winning percentage, then by wins, then alphabetically. That is our sort and not an official ranking. Loudoun has not published a standings order and we are not inventing one.

The whole tiebreaker, for the first time

Matt Oblas, athletic director at Riverside, set out the chain for us on October 2. If two teams finish level on record, the first tiebreaker is head to head. If three teams finish level, it goes to head to head among those three, and if that does not separate them it goes to who beat the next best team among those three. If that still does not separate them, it goes to a coin flip or a draw. In his words: “Point differential never comes into play with any of our sports in tiebreaking procedures in Loudon.”

There is no points component anywhere in it. Not points scored and not points allowed. A seed in Loudoun comes down to results between the tied teams, and when those do not settle it, to chance.

That matters more here than it would in most leagues, because of how the schedule is built. Loudoun's season is seventy-three games long and it contains seventy-three different pairings. No two schools in the county play each other twice. Every team meets every opponent it meets at all exactly once, and then never again, so head to head means one game that happens once.

What that means with eleven days to go. Riverside beat Heritage by a point on September 28 and those two do not meet again, so Riverside hold that tiebreaker for the rest of the season no matter what either team does next. Freedom beat Woodgrove on August 25, their only meeting, and the two of them are level on record right now. Lightridge and Freedom played their only meeting on Thursday. Independence and Woodgrove played theirs the same night. Every one of those results is permanent as a tiebreaker, because there is no second game to change it.

October 13: three games, three times, one bracket

October 13 at Potomac Falls is two semifinals and the final on one evening. The times are 5:30, 6:30 and 7:30. That is from Nick Siano, athletic director at Potomac Falls, which is hosting.

The bracket crosses the two halves of the county. Siano, the same day: “Game 1, Region 1 #1 vs Region 2 #2. Game 2, Region 2 #1 vs Region 1 #2. Game 3, Championship.” Oblas had described the same thing on September 30, and confirmed the membership of the two halves in writing on October 2.

So each semifinal is a team from one half against a team from the other, and two teams from the same half cannot meet before the championship. Lightridge and Freedom are first and second in the same half. If both qualify, the one place they can play each other again is the 7:30.

We held that open for three hours on Friday afternoon. Siano's first note labelled the slots “5:30 Region 1, 6:30 Region 2,” which reads as each half playing its own semifinal, and we could not tell from the words whether that named the teams or the home seeds. It named the home seeds. We would rather ask and wait than print a bracket and take it back.

Standings through Thursday, October 1

Wins equal losses at sixty-one each, and points for equal points against at 1,554 each, which is the check that the table closes. Winning percentage leads the sort because the schedule is not even: ten schools have nine games on their calendar and seven have eight, so wins alone would rank a team for having played more football. It is why Lightridge at six and none sit above Heritage at seven and one. September's tournament games are not in here; they are on the championship page.

This week

Six finals, which ties September 8 as the fullest night of the season. Every one is on the schedule page with its source named.

Lightridge have now won six from six. Woodgrove have won five in a row, Dominion four, and John Champe and Briar Woods have each won their last two.

Three one-point games in eight days

Loudoun played five weeks without a single one-point game. Then it played three inside eight days. Lightridge 7, Independence 6 on September 24. Riverside 7, Heritage 6 on September 28. Lightridge 7, Freedom 6 on Thursday. Those are the only three the county has produced all season, and the next closest game in the record is two points, Independence 14, John Champe 12 on September 15.

Lightridge won two of the three, both of them 7 to 6, a week apart. Before those two they had won four straight and had not been held under twenty points in any of them.

A coach wrote in, and that is why this issue exists

Everything above about the tiebreaker is on this page because an assistant coach at one of the qualifying schools emailed us on Thursday evening and asked a question nobody had published an answer to.

She had worked out from our own schedule page that her team and another were level on record, and she wanted to know whether a tie went to point differential or to head to head. She was right about the standings, and she asked us to check her rather than take her word for it.

We did not know the answer. So we asked Oblas, and he gave us the chain that runs to a coin flip. She then asked what time the playoffs start, so her staff could arrange time off work, and nobody had published that either. So we asked Potomac Falls, and that is where the 5:30, 6:30 and 7:30 came from.

Two facts that every family in this county has a use for existed nowhere in public until one coach asked us for them on a Thursday night. Both are now published, free, with the men who answered credited by name.

She has given permission for us to say she asked. On being told what we still did not know, she wrote: “I appreciate the details and even your insight on some of the missing info.”

If you have a question about this sport that you cannot find an answer to, send it to hello@flagsupvirginia.com. We will either answer it or go and find out, and either way the answer goes on the site where everyone can see it.

We were wrong in print for three weeks

Briar Woods beat Broad Run 20 to 0 on Tuesday September 8. Our schedule page said that game did not happen.

On the night itself the fixture had disappeared from both schools' district listings, and Broad Run's next game was shown as September 14, so we took it off the page and said in the source note that it was gone. It later reappeared on both district pages carrying 20 to 0, which is why we asked. Michael Benson, athletic director at Briar Woods, answered on October 1: “Yes we played BR that evening. 20-0. Win.”

The game is restored, the whole sequence is in the source note, and the correction is dated in the corrections block on the schedule page. The standings in Issues No. 3 through No. 6 were computed without that result, so those tables are each short one game.

Northern Virginia, and it is bigger than we thought

We have been calling it Fairfax. It is not Fairfax.

Dick Adams, who runs flag football for Fairfax County Public Schools' student activities office and whom the county calls its commissioner for the sport, sent us the league's opening-week results, its standings and its full fixture list on Friday afternoon.

Thirty schools, in five pods of six. Not twenty-five, which is the number we have been printing since August. And not one county: Washington-Liberty, Yorktown and Wakefield are Arlington, Alexandria City is its own division, and Falls Church City has Meridian. Four jurisdictions, in a league run out of a Fairfax office. We have asked Mr. Adams what the thing is actually called, because Fairfax is plainly the wrong name for it and we would rather use the one the people in it use.

Twenty-five games were played in the opening week, on September 29 and 30. Three of them were drawn. South County 6, Mount Vernon 6. McLean 6, Washington-Liberty 6. Fairfax 0, Lake Braddock 0. Loudoun has not produced a single tie in sixty-one games. Two leagues, ten weeks into the same sport, have not yet agreed on what a season looks like.

One result in that opening week we already had. Chantilly 12, Westfield 0, which we read off the county system ourselves and published on our Fairfax page. It matches his record exactly. That is the first time anything of ours has been independently confirmed from that side of the river.

Mr. Adams has offered to send us the results every week. We have said yes.

Thirty-one of sixty-one

Thirty-one of Loudoun's sixty-one games have ended with one side held scoreless, and two of Thursday's six did. The count was twenty-eight of fifty-four a week ago. Nobody has a baseline for a first season, so we are keeping the number each week in order to have one next year.

What is coming

Monday October 5 is four games. Loudoun Valley at Lightridge, Briar Woods at Riverside, Potomac Falls at Broad Run, Dominion at Tuscarora.

Thursday October 8 is seven, and it is the last night of the regular season for most of the county. Riverside at Park View, Loudoun County at Potomac Falls, Freedom at Stone Bridge, Independence at Loudoun Valley, Woodgrove at Lightridge, John Champe at Briar Woods, and Heritage against Dominion at 6:45 at Potomac Falls.

Friday October 9 is the last regular season game of all, Tuscarora at Rock Ridge at 4:45 at Phoenix Stadium. Rock Ridge call it homecoming.

Then October 13 at Potomac Falls. 5:30, 6:30, 7:30.

Report a score

Anyone can send us a final. The form takes about half a minute and asks for the two schools, the score and how you know. Coaches and athletic directors can send a photograph of the scoresheet instead of typing anything. Everything goes up free, credited to whoever gave it to us, and if we get something wrong we correct it the same day and say in print that we were wrong.

Earlier: Issue No. 6, Three unbeaten, and Monday · 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.