More Than a Record
This archive preserves not only the wins, but the values that produced them, integrity, preparation, discipline, and a teacher's care for every player who came through the program.
Donald Joseph McCool learned the game in the hoop-happy foothills of West Virginia and spent nearly three decades teaching Northern Virginia how to play it his way: full-court pressure, end to end, with conditioning and discipline that wore opponents down. Across five high schools he compiled a record of 431–134, won two Virginia state championships, seven region titles and ten district titles, and was named Virginia High School Coaches Association Coach of the Year in 1989.
In 1979 his Mount Vernon Majors became the first basketball team in Fairfax County to start five Black players, and won the school's first and only state championship. He was, by every account of the people who played and coached with him, fair, honest, demanding, and a teacher first. In 2015 he was inducted into the Virginia High School League Hall of Fame.