[1/28/03]It seemed fitting that Vicksburg High’s soccer teams practiced on opposite ends of the field Monday afternoon at Memorial Stadium. After all, their situations couldn’t be more different as they head into today’s playoff openers.

The Missy Gators enter tonight’s first-round contest against Gulfport (6-10), which begins at Memorial Stadium at 5:30 p.m., with a 19-2-2 record and the last two state championship trophies in their case. They’re eyeing the first three-peat in state history.

The Gators, meanwhile, finished the regular season with a 5-12 record and will travel to the Coast to face Gulfport at 6:30 p.m. They admit they’re the underdogs against the Division 8-5A champions, and are looking to use the game as a building experience for the future.

“Regardless, this year has been great. I’ve been able to teach these young guys and hopefully next year they can go farther,” Gators senior forward Jeremy Johnson said.

Few teams have gone farther in any sport than the Missy Gators. VHS has won five of the last seven state championships, and played for a sixth. All of that experience has boosted expectations for this latest playoff run, but coach Kevin Manton was wary of his team’s first-round opponent.

The Missy Gators beat Gulfport 2-0 in a tournament in November, and are coming off a 1-0 win over a tough Pearl team on Saturday. Brandi Parker scored a second-half goal off of an assist from Holly Head to provide the margin of victory.

Although it was a win over a quality opponent, Manton said the Missy Gators have not been playing their best soccer lately.

“My fear with Gulfport is, we’ve already beaten them. It wasn’t a challenge, but they only brought 12 players that day,” Manton said. “If we play well and do things, I think our chances are real good. If we drag around and play like we’ve played lately, we can get beat anytime.”

Manton added that he’d like to see the Missy Gators improve on their play tonight, but hoped they would save their best games for last.

“Not near what we were before Christmas. We’ve had some moments, but overall, no,” Manton said when asked if his team was playing its best heading into the playoffs. “Not a complete game, and I hope we don’t play a complete game Tuesday. I want us to get better Tuesday, then a little better Saturday, then a little better the Tuesday after that.”

If the Missy Gators can continue to improve, a piece of history might be in their future. No team, boys or girls, has won three consecutive state championships since the state playoffs began in 1989. The girls state playoffs began in 1995 and VHS has won back-to-back titles twice, in 1998-99 and 2001-02. The Missy Gators also won a state title in 1996.

“That would mean a lot, because I don’t think anybody has ever done that before, and it’d be pretty neat to set that record,” Parker said.

The goals for the Gators are more modest.

First-year coach Drew Kennedy has the Gators back in the playoffs after a one-year absence, but seven of 11 starters are underclassmen and the Gators have struggled with inexperience this season.

“Lately, we haven’t really been showing up for games that weren’t district games, so hopefully we’ll step up for this one,” Kennedy said, adding that the Gators must get more physical to have a shot at advancing. “We have to be more physical than we’ve been. I got on them the last few games for not winning the 50-50 balls. That’s crucial. If we’re losing 50-50 balls, there’s no chance at all. We have to get into the final third more effectively.”

The good news for the Gators is that the best is still to come for the program. The team will only lose two players to graduation, and will have only two seniors next year.

“I would look at us as underdogs. We’re a team that’s a few years away, but we’re coming,” Kennedy said.

That doesn’t mean this trip to the postseason won’t be fun, though, no matter how long it lasts.

“We’ve been hearing it all year,” Johnson said of the Gators’ underdog status. “(Gulfport is) no Warren Central, so we’re not going to put as much into it, but we’re going to try to go and prove everybody wrong.

“Even if we don’t do that well, we can say we went. Nobody thought we were going to do well, so at least we proved a few of them wrong.”