SEE PRESS PASS

PAGE 18 |JULY 1 – 7, 2021

SPORTS

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

Mustangs Defeat Spotswood 4-2 in 12th State Championship

by Mike Abler

Falls Church News-Press

Three years removed from its most recent state title, George Mason High School’s boys soccer team rose to the mountaintop once again after beating Spotswood High School 4-2 for their 12th State Championship title last week.

This win capped off another impressive season for the Mustangs, but the beginning of the season wasn’t the kind of start they wanted. In the season opener, Mason tied Charles J. Colgan High School on the road 1-1.

That wound up being the only blemish of the season as the Mustangs would go on a 14-game winning streak for the rest of the season.

None of the games were even close, with 11 of those 14 wins being shutouts and the Mustangs outscoring their opponents 58-5 throughout the season.

But Covid made the possibility of playing a question mark.

“Since there was so much uncertainty about the season, we wanted to make every day count,” Mason head coach Frank Spinello said. The secret to Mason’s success was, “having competitive practices that kept us focused,” according to Spinello. Coach Greiner enforced a mantra of getting one percent better every day, and the team took this to heart.

The coaches helped the players prepare by giving them individual workouts and having Zoom meetings throughout the week.

It was in these Zoom meetings that Spinello and his staff instilled a sense of “Teamwork and the mental health of our players.”

Senior midfielder Declan Quill described playing for the Mustangs as, “Having a target on your back because everyone knows Mason’s history in soccer.” Quill also added that this victory was “The highlight of the season. It was great to hold that trophy above my head after the game.”

Quill attributed Mason’s success to the team’s overall leadership as well as having the entire team dialed in to win. “Having 27 guys committed allowed us to stay focused on the task at hand and allowed us to fight through the season.”

The team has always held a higher standard. Quill called it “The Mason standard,” where it’s not about just being successful on the field, but also doing well off the field. In his eyes, the team met those standards and expects more great things down the road. He gave props to the coaching staff as well, who he believes will continue to guide the team to its high level of achievement for years to come.

The Mustangs have been extraordinary throughout the majority of the past 20 years and have now won their seventh state title in 11 years (discounting the lost Spring 2020 season due to the pandemic). So Quill’s assessments of continued dominance for the team are frighteningly realistic.

“If we stick to playing Mason Soccer, future teams will be hard to beat,” Quill concluded.

ANNING SMITH, varsity midfielder, contributed to the impressive win. (Photo: Carol Sly)

Benton’s ‘Education of a Gay Soul’ Informs Readers About Gay Identity & Influence

by J. Roslyn

Special to the News-Press

In 2013, Nicholas Benton published a book of 100 essays he had written and printed in the Falls Church News Press, the publication that he founded some 30 years ago, as well as the Metro Weekly.

The title of that book is “Extraordinary Hearts: Reclaiming Gay Sensibility’s Central Role in the Progress of Civilization.” It is an extraordinary scholarly work that, among other things, provided a unique insight into the lives of Oscar Wilde, Tennessee Williams, Christpher Isherwood and others.

So much has changed in the world since 2013. There has been a sea change as a result of the LGBTQ+ community (shortened by Benton to collectively to mean “gay”) demanding and receiving in part equality and a prominent seat at governing tables.

Recently, Benton has taken the content of many of the essays published in “Extraordinary Hearts” and arranged them in “a fluid singular narrative,” in his newest book, “Education of a Gay Soul.”

After laying the framework for understanding the three aspects that help to define gay identity — “gay sensibility, gay alternative perspective, and gay constructive non-conformity” — Benton unrolls the history of this gay identity and its influence on our culture.

For the reader, this book can best be described as slowly traveling on a river, perhaps with Mark Twain, glimpsing Benton’s remarkable vignettes of a largely unknown gay history which Benton meshes with the gift of gay sensibility. Specifically, he defines gay sensibility as the capability of:

“Loving and caring for persons of our own sex in ways that those without it can’t match, but we also have a unique capacity to love and care for persons of the opposite sex, because we do not measure such persons from the standpoint of dominion, procreation and society’s structures for perpetuating these. Gay sensibility empowers us with a unique capacity to love all persons regardless of gender, in a compassionate, empathetic way.”

As we glide down the river, Benton first introduces us to Walt Whitman.

It was Whitman who provided gays “with our core gay identity 150 years ago with his notion of the ‘great poet,’” according to Benton.

As we move on, we meet other great thinkers Benton identifies as gay, who devoted their lives to saving all of humanity, including Socrates, Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt and many others.

Benton has written another extraordinary book, that reveals extraordinary histories that must not be buried or forgotten. Indeed, if the reader was truly traveling with Mark Twain, he would be one of the vignettes.

As Larry Kramer once said, “How could you not realize that Mark Twain was gay?”

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

LOCAL

Mason Invested Greatly in Falls Church Area

Continued from Page 3

now known as Rosslyn as well as Theodore Roosevelt Island, formally called Mason Island and used by his son for providing a ferry service between Virginia and Georgetown across the Potomac River. His estate was Gunston Hall, the historic mansion in Mason Neck where McAndrews regularly portrays this founding father.

Mason was an Anglican/ Episcopalian and this provides a link between the founding father and the Falls Church area: He was on the vestry of the Truro parish which oversaw the Falls Church.

Falls Church historian Bradley E. Gernand explained to the Falls Church News-Press that in colonial-era Virginia, the Church of England operated regional parishes, each anchored by a physical church. These churches served as both religious centers and also provided government services.

Church overseers, known as vestrymen, were leaders of society. In the 1700s, the Church of England established a small frame church at the crossroads of ancient native trails.

The spot, in the heart of today’s City of Falls Church, was referred to as the “church up at the falls” (a.k.a. the Little Falls on the Potomac).

Ron Anzalone, the chair of the City’s Historical Commission, also noted that “It looks like Mason and Washington helped decide to build the brick church to replace the old frame one in Falls Church.” Today this church is known as The Falls Church Episcopal and thus Mason plays a significant role in the history of not only Virginia and the U.S., but of the modern City of Falls Church.

In part due to his faith, George Mason opposed slavery, viewing it as an abomination and a moral evil, though puzzlingly he also owned 150 slaves. McAndrews holds that the reason for this seeming contradiction is that Mason saw that the harsh laws imposed on both freed slaves and their former owners meant that slavery had to be abolished by everyone simultaneously for freedom to be truly effective.

Schools, historic Masonic lodges, and former Chief Justices Warren Burger and William Rehnquist have witnessed McAndrews’ performances and McAndrews served as a model for a statue of George Mason in Washington, D.C., near the Jefferson Memorial. The Manassas resident runs an advertising agency for a career, but for McAndrews, the first-person interpretation of George Mason is his passion.

GUNSTON HALL, the historic mansion of George Mason, located at Mason Neck (top photo) where visitors can �ind a bust depict-

ing Mason himself. (P�����: C������� D����������).

JULY 1 – 7, 2021 | PAGE 19

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