Despite sweltering heat, a crowd “even bigger than last year” went to the Outlets at Vicksburg Saturday morning for the 13th annual citywide pep rally.

With temperatures up to 93 degrees by 10 a.m., cheerleaders, dance teams and bands performed for the crowd to kick off the start to a new school year and football season.

Paige Caldwell, marketing and events coordinator for the Outlets at Vicksburg, said she had no way to count the people, but she knew it was a lot.

“Last year we had a couple of thousand people out there,” Caldwell said. “This year, judging from the crowd and the traffic, we had more people for sure.”

“I don’t know how many people it was, but it was one of the largest crowds we’ve ever had — and it was one of the hottest,” Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace said.

As always, he said, traffic became an issue as vehicles spent hours trying to leave the shopping center to get back on four-lane Clay Street.

“The citywide pep rally gets everyone pumped up,” said Anne Elizabeth Buys, a 15-year-old cheerleader and sophomore at Porters Chapel Academy. “There aren’t many times when we all come together from different schools and support each other, but we do that here.”

Lorissa Tolliver’ of Vicksburg bought the $5 golf ball — one of 3,000 dropped from a helicopter — that hit the closest to a target, meaning she won $1,000 and the United Way of West Central Mississippi reaped the benefits of the fundraiser.

The money from the Vicksburg Kiwanis Club event will go to victims of the 2011 Mississippi River flood.

Booths for face painting, snacks and drinks were set up in the shade at the rally, and some organizations passed out free water to spectators.

Junior high and high school cheerleaders from Porters Chapel, Warren Central and Vicksburg cheered at the event. St. Aloysius High School cheerleaders and Flashettes performed, and VHS Gator Girls danced. Bands from VHS and WCHS also performed.

Dante Sanders, a 17-year-old senior cheerleader has been participating in the citywide pep rally since his freshman year in high school, first with Warren Central and now with St. Aloysius.

“It’s always good to perform with everyone and there are always a lot of family and friends at the pep rally,” Dante said. “The crowd was fantastic and the whole thing is intended to start out the season. It’s just a pep rally for everybody.”

“This year the pep rally was a huge success,” Caldwell said. “Every year it gets bigger and bigger, and hotter and hotter.”