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- Sports in the Washington, D.C. area include major league sports teams, popular college sports teams, and a variety of other team and individual sports. The Washington metropolitan area is also home to several major sports venues including Capital One Arena, RFK Stadium, FedExField, Audi Field, and Nationals Park. The NFL's Washington Commanders were among the most successful professional sports teams in North America throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, making four Super Bowl appearances and winning three in a ten-year period ending in 1992. The sports of this region would then fall into a period of irrelevance; after the NHL's Washington Capitals reached the 1998 Stanley Cup Finals, none of the "Big Four" teams in the area (the Commanders, the Capitals, the NBA's Washington Wizards and MLB's Washington Nationals) would reach its sport's conference championship round for several years. The Commanders and Wizards often struggled in their respective regular seasons, while the Capitals and Nationals were known for having spectacular regular seasons followed by demoralizing playoff losses. (However, D.C. United of Major League Soccer would win several league championships during the late 1990s and early 2000s.) In 2018, the Big Four drought was broken when the Capitals defeated the Vegas Golden Knights in the 2018 Stanley Cup Finals. The following year, the Nationals defeated the Houston Astros in the 2019 World Series. Outside of the Big Four, the Washington Valor defeated the Baltimore Brigade to win ArenaBowl XXXI in July 2018, and the Washington Mystics defeated the Connecticut Sun in the 2019 WNBA Finals barely a month before the Nationals won their title, giving the Washington area four first-time champions in under two years. Popular collegiate teams include the Georgetown Hoyas and Maryland Terrapins; both schools have each won an NCAA Division I men's basketball championship (Georgetown in 1984, Maryland in 2002). The region is also home to two regional sports television networks: NBC Sports Washington, based in Bethesda, Maryland, and Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, based in Baltimore. In 2018, it was announced that Paul Sheehy, owner and director of used operations for Sheehy Auto Stores, and Chris Dunlavey, president and co-founder of Brailsford & Dunlavey, have secured the right to launch a D.C.-based Major League Rugby team, named Old Glory DC. The Scottish Rugby Union has a part ownership of the team. The team is coached by Nate Osborne in an interim capacity after former head coach Andrew Douglas departed the club halfway through the 2022 season. Old Glory played an abbreviated schedule of exhibition games in 2019 and began regular-season MLR play in 2020. (en)
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- Sports in the Washington, D.C. area include major league sports teams, popular college sports teams, and a variety of other team and individual sports. The Washington metropolitan area is also home to several major sports venues including Capital One Arena, RFK Stadium, FedExField, Audi Field, and Nationals Park. (en)
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