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Riverdale Baptist girls finish on top

By Preston Williams,March 14, 2011

The Riverdale Baptist girls get pumped up before their Feb. 10 showdown… (Doug Kapustin/FOR THE WASHINGTON…)

Riverdale Baptist has finished with the final No. 1 girls’ basketball ranking for the third year in a row, but that’s not even the newsiest thing to happen to the Crusaders in the past few days.

Their National Christian School Athletic Association championship game Saturday against Potter’s House Christian (Fla.) in Erie, Pa., was halted midway through the fourth quarter after a bench-clearing incident. Both teams were disqualified and no champion was crowned.

Riverdale Coach Diane Richardson said that one of her players was taunted and threatened and that when she questioned the Potter’s House coaches about the behavior she was cursed and approached aggressively by a Potter’s House player. Both benches cleared.

Potter’s House (36-1), which beat Riverdale early in the season, was leading 68-50 when the game was stopped.

NCSAA Director Nate Hartman said that he received conflicting accounts from various observers but said that no punches were thrown.

“Neither team was an innocent party in terms of what led to the disqualification,” Hartman said. “In a Christian organization [this incident] is very disappointing because it doesn’t just reflect on the teams or the programs or the kids or the organization, it reflects on the name of Christ. And that’s what we hold up as our primary motivation in our tournament.”

Hartman said that it has not been determined whether either of the schools would be invited to future NCSAA tournaments.

Asked if this would affect the local perception of the Riverdale program, Richardson said, “It shouldn’t. We didn’t do anything wrong. Absolutely nothing wrong.”

Riverdale (30-4), an independent team that plays about half its games against schools outside the Washington area, finishes in the top spot thanks in part to beating No. 2 St. John’s. Riverdale’s lone local loss was to No. 5 Spalding on Dec. 10.

St. John’s won the WCAC regular season and tournament titles, the City Title championship and the Bishop Walsh Invitational crown this past weekend. But Riverdale convincingly won the schools’ head-to-head matchup, 79-55, on Feb. 10. See the rest of The Post’s Top 20 here.