Falls Church’s Meridian High School boys soccer team was introduced by Principal Peter Laub and justifiably lauded at Tuesday night’s first school board meeting of the new school year for winning the Virginia High School League Class 3 state championship last spring.
With most of the 27 team members present, including 14 seniors, the values guiding the team as presented in “we before me” remarks by its Virginia’s two-time Class 3 Coach of the Year Nathan Greiner reflected those of Falls Church’s outstanding school system as a whole, which was again this year ranked Number One in the entire state.
The Meridian soccer team’s Fletcher Saaty was named an All-American and the VHSL Class 3 Player of the Year, while Aidan Bakewell and Ben Beloe were named Academic All Americans, and Henry Brown, Ben Beloe, Amin Shams, Suriyan Cushman and Aiden Blackwell were named to the VHSL Class 3 All-State first team, and Zack Miller, a freshman, to the second team.
It was an impressive display of excellence. Meridian, including its years being known as George Mason High, now has more state championships in soccer than any other school. The City of Falls Church should be rightfully proud of everyone involved.
With a new superintendent, Dr. Terry J. Dade, the City schools’ wide array of excellence was exhibited at its annual convocation, this year a two-day affair, involving the entire system’s teachers and staff, at the Meridian auditorium this week. Not the least, of course, was the impressive new, state of the art high school facility itself.
If there is anything that sets the “Little City” and its some 15,000 residents piled into 2.2 square miles apart, it is its schools. It’s what the last three decades of City leaders have been able to accomplish through an aggressive commercial development focus that has brought the financial resources to pay for brand new high and middle schools, major improvements to the other three schools and competitive teacher salaries. They have been supplemented by the fundraising work of the Falls Church Educational Foundation.
Wise leadership at City Hall and the City Council and in the schools’ administration and elected school boards, managed the two-sided effort of economic development and school construction efforts in a highly impressive fashion, even while embracing collective bargaining for the first time and stiff competition for talent from the entire region.
If ever a “state championship” was deserved in Falls Church, it would be for this extraordinary effort, though treated as “ordinary business” by the many leaders involved.
Many school districts have been targets of right-wing assaults nationwide and those in this region, including institutions of higher education like the University of Virginia and George Mason University, are no exceptions. The Covid epidemic made possible not only legitimate concerns, but a lot of politically-motivated rancor, as well. Through all this, the Falls Church system, and its supportive wider Falls Church community, have prevailed magnificently.
