And the beat goes on….
Once again, as has been the case far too many times over the past four decades, no prep football squad from the three southernmost counties in the state of Mississippi will be on hand to grab a gold football when the state championships are decided next week.
The situation is actually much worse than most realize.
In the 43 seasons since the Mississippi High School Activities Association implemented a state-wide football playoff system in 1981, there have been 223 state championship gold footballs won on the football field across the various six classifications during that span with coast teams winning just eight of those. That’s less than four percent total.
And those eight titles have been won by just four schools: Pascagoula (1987) Moss Point (1983, 1991, 1996, 1997, 2000), D’Iberville (2002) and St. Stanislaus (2009). No coast school has won a state football championship in the past 14 years, since SSC beat Lafayette County 35-16 in 2009.
And next week, when seven crowns are handed out for the first time ever in MHSAA history, no team from the Mississippi Gulf Coast will be there to snap that streak.
The Gautier Gators were the last hope in the current campaign, but the Gators fell on the road in Laurel 31-10 Friday night in the Class 5A South State championship game to end their journey.
Last season, both Gautier and Ocen Springs fell in their respective South State title tilts. The last time a team from the Coast played for a state title was in 2017, when East Central fell in the Class 4A state championship game to Noxubee County. NCHS also beat SSC in 2014 and 2015 for the Class 4A state crown.
State championship schedule
No teams from the “Southern Six” qualified to play for a state championship this year, but for the first time ever there will be a total of seven state titles decided at Vaught-Hemmingway Stadium on the campus of the University of Mississippi in Oxford. The games begin Thursday and will wind up on Saturday after three days of action.
Here is the complete schedule:
2023 MHSAA STATE CHAMPIONSHIP SCHEDULE
At Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, Oxford
THURSDAY
CLASS 1A
4 p.m. — Biggersville (11-1) vs. Velma Jackson (13-0)
CLASS 5A
7:30 p.m. — West Point (10-3) vs. Laurel (8-6)
FRIDAY
CLASS 2A
4 p.m. — Charleston (12-2) vs. Heidelberg (11-3)
CLASS 6A
7:30 p.m. — Grenada (11-3) vs. West Jones (13-0)
SATURDAY
CLASS 4A
Noon — Louisville (14-0) vs. Columbia (14-0)
CLASS 3A
3:30 p.m. — Winona (14-0) vs. Noxubee County (10-4)
CLASS 7A
7 p.m. — Starkville (10-3) vs. Oak Grove (12-1)
