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Spring teams can't take advantage of last year together
You may as well just go ahead and prepare for it now: Starting in August, the county's high school sports teams are going to have a hard time of it.
The fact is that Culpeper had some ups and - frequent - downs throughout this year. The field hockey team and basketball team provided nice runs. The softball team played very well in a difficult district. But other than that it was a struggle.
With Eastern View coming, it is only going to get tougher.
It's hard enough to stay competitive year in and year out within the high school landscape, simply because of kids graduating. Now you're combining that challenge with splitting rosters down the middle - Culpeper's current teams will make up both the CCHS and EVHS squads next year. That means all those teams that endured hard 2007-08 campaigns will be split in two.
It's far too early to guess at how Eastern View will compete against its "district foes" down in the Spotsylvania region.
I can tell you that Culpeper, still in the Cedar Run District and Virginia's AAA level for one more year, will stumble often.
Don't read that as an indictment against the talent in the area, or the coaching, or anything of that sort. It is just a synopsis of a trying situation.
The spring marked the last real chance for Culpeper's athletes to make some noise on a united front. The last shot for all the kids to unite under one banner and make some noise.
They all played hard, there is no doubt about that.
Unfortunately, it did not work out.
Wednesday, the softball team fell in the Cedar Run District quarterfinals and - other than a few individual track and field athletes - that was the deepest any CCHS team got this spring. Soccer, lacrosse and baseball all bowed out in the quarterfinals.
Realistically, the writing was on the wall for the girls soccer and both lacrosse teams heading into the playoffs.
There were hopes for baseball, boys soccer and softball. But the boys soccer team ran into a powerful Osbourn Park squad, and the baseball team caught some bad bounces at Stonewall Jackson.
So all that remained was the Devilette softball team. And their situation highlighted Culpeper's future challenges more than any other group. CCHS lost in the semis to Loudoun Valley - and it's hard to argue that there is a better team anywhere in the state that will not participate in regionals next year.
The fact of the matter is that the Cedar Run District, while not always watching teams challenge for state titles, has a lot of very good athletes. There may not be "state title caliber" teams, save for two or three for an entire school year, but lots of squads are deep and potent. Fauquier tennis, Battlefield baseball or soccer, Liberty football. Up and down the district, it is a challenge to win every night.
Now, all of a sudden, Culpeper is going to be entering these fights short-handed.
And success may be hard to come by.
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