November 7 - Paul VI Catholic High School’s relocation to South Riding in the summer of 2019 was approved by Loudoun County’s Board of Supervisors last week, and the school’s move west will serve as another boost for a community that is quickly becoming one of the baseball hotbeds in Northern Virginia.
Plans are for the Catholic school to move onto a new campus on Braddock Road in time for the 2019-20 school year, and the school will come equipped with an athletics facility to include a turfed football stadium field, grass rectangular field circled by a track, baseball and softball fields, six tennis courts, and a cross country course.
The Panthers’ baseball team currently plays on a multi-sport field at its Fairfax campus, which for years has caused scheduling headaches as teams work their practice and game schedules around other sports. Paul VI’s current field dates back to the 1930s, when the campus was the original home of Fairfax High School. It also served as the first home field for George Mason University - current Patriots coach Bill Brown played on the field when he attended the school in the 1970s - and was for a number of years where the now-defunct Clark Griffith Collegiate Baseball League played all of its games during the summer months. San Francisco Giants manager Bruce Bochy was one many future big leaguers who spent his summers playing CGCBL games on the field.
Billy Emerson, the school’s athletics director and baseball coach, will have a hand in the design of all of the athletic fields at the new campus. A baseball-only field will certainly make practice planning easier, the coach said.
“It’s going to be great to know that every day you’re going to be able to have a whole field,” Emerson said. “You’re not going to have to spend time every Sunday looking at the upcoming next week or so and saying, ‘OK, on this day we’re not going to be able to take batting practice because we have lacrosse ahead of us’, or ‘On this day we’ll need to get off early because another team needs to warm up’. I’m not going to miss that at all.”
The Catholic Diocese of Arlington, which owns the Fairfax campus and will be financing the new campus, has put a timeline in place for the move. But several factors could still delay the relocation.
“The plan is that we open in the summer of 2019, if everything stays on track,” Emerson said. “Of course with any construction project, you can’t rule out the possibility that it could be delayed a year. But we all hope and pray we’ll be on schedule.”
The new Paul VI location will be about four miles driving southeast on Braddock Road from Freedom High School. John Champe High School will be a seven-mile drive northwest up Braddock Road to Aldie from the new campus. Both of those public schools have experienced success in their short history thanks to rapid housing development in the area. Freedom, which opened in 2005, advanced to the state tournament twice under previous head coach Jason Treon, and John Champe gained its first regional berth in 2015 under coach Joe McDonald, just three years after opening its doors.
The Loudoun South Little League is one of the state’s largest, with spring enrollment numbers reported to already be over 1,000 players. The Aldie Senators and Loudoun South Eagles consistently field some of the area’s top youth and middle school aged travel teams and advance deep into Northern Virginia Travel Baseball League (NVTBL) tournaments as well as annual events such as the Longhorn Stampede and Kyle’s Kamp Memorial Day Tournament. Other travel programs continue to field teams based in the area, many of them training at one of the area’s largest indoor facilities, Rip City, which is located 10 minutes from where Paul VI’s new campus will be located.
“Loudoun County has done well as far as [high school teams] going deep into regionals, getting kids going to college in our respective school districts,” current Freedom coach Mark Wrighte said. “They’ve really done a great job of developing the Little Leagues in recent years. South Riding is really only on its second true decade of existence, but already teams are going to states.
“It’s created a competitive environment.”
Inserting Emerson’s program, which he and former coach Jeff Nolan have built into one of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area’s best, will only add to that environment. The Panthers are annual contenders in the baseball-rich Washington Catholic Athletic Conference (WCAC) and a threat each spring to make a deep run in the Virginia Independent Schools Athletic Association (VISAA) Division I state tournament. The Panthers have won three WCAC championships and four VISAA state titles since 2004.
They’ve done so while drawing players from Fairfax County and its surrounding counties, Arlington, Loudoun and Prince William. Wrighte doesn’t see the private school’s move down the street draining the Eagles’ talent pool.
“I actually think it’ll have a phenomenal impact on our program,” Wrighte said. “If Paul VI was moving from Arlington or Woodbridge, it might have different impact. But for that faith-based family who wants to send their kids to a Catholic school, you weren’t opposed to going to Fairfax. I don’t think the location where it was was that big of a deterrent.”
Paul VI does not offer athletic scholarships for student-athletes like some private and Catholic schools, and Emerson said he and his staff will continue to work all corners of Northern Virginia to draw top talent to their program.
“We don’t have kids who just show up because they live in the neighborhood, we have to recruit every kid who walks in our door,” Emerson said. “We’re trying to make people aware that if you want to send your kids to a place that’s going to prepare them for college, has a faith-based mentality, and is going to play in a very good league, we’re a great option. And the new facilities are only going to help that.”
Wrighte, for one, hopes the presence of Paul VI in South Riding will yield the possibility for a crosstown rivalry.
“From a convenience standpoint, I’d love to set it up and sort of build that public vs. private school rivalry,” he said. “If you’re in the public school, you love rooting against the private school teams, and vice versa.
“I think that would be great for our community.”
Photo of Paul VI players and coach Billy Emerson courtesy of Paul VI Catholic baseball
