When St. Aloysius ended its longtime affiliation with the Mississippi High School Activities Association last summer and joined the Mississippi Association of Independent Schools, the girls soccer team was among the first athletic programs to deal with the change.

A new schedule had to be drafted. Players, who weren’t expecting to play a game until November, had to scramble to prepare for a season that began in August. Most importantly, the school had to find a coach to oversee the chaos.

Last year’s coach, Don Rowland, does not teach at St. Al and wasn’t able to adjust his work schedule in time for the MAIS season. So boys coach Scott Mathis stepped in to fill the void.

“It wasn’t a big adjustment, because I coached girls all my life. I said I’d never do it again,” joked Mathis, whose daughter Sydney plays for St. Al.

Mathis did do it, however, and did it very well. He guided the Lady Flashes to an undefeated season and the MAIS Division III championship — the first state title in the program’s history. After that, he returned to his regular job as St. Al’s boys coach and led them to the District 1-AAA title.

For his work with both teams, Mathis is the 2016 Vicksburg Post Soccer Coach of the Year. He’s the first St. Al coach to win the award since Keiko Booth in 2010.

“He did a great job keeping our energy up and conducting practice. He made us work for everything. There was no halfway doing anything,” said St. Al midfielder Sara McDaniel.

The MHSAA to MAIS switch brought a lot of change to the program, both on the field and off.

The MHSAA season runs from November to February, but the MAIS season goes from August to October. That meant St. Al, which normally plays and practices on the school’s football field, had to relocate. It did everything in Bovina and didn’t play a true home game until the playoffs.

Under Mathis’ leadership, however, none of those outside factors became an issue. He gave senior leaders McDaniel and Shelby Bottin a lot of leadership responsibilities and credited them with doing most of the heavy lifting both on the field and off. Their leadership, he said, made his job easy.

“With the boys, I had to stay on them all the time. I didn’t have to worry about that with the girls,” Mathis said.

In short order, the Lady Flashes transformed into a powerhouse. They went 11-0 in the regular season and won the District 1 championship. Only one game, an overtime victory over Indianola Academy, was decided by less than three goals.

The games got tighter in the playoffs, but the wins kept coming. The last, a 2-1 victory over Hartfield Academy, gave St. Al the state championship it had never been more than a longshot to win.

Mathis admitted he was disappointed with the boys’ team’s first-round playoff exit, but was happy with the school’s overall soccer year. For more than a decade, St. Al had struggled to get traction on the state level while competing against Class 2A and 3A teams in the MHSAA. Playing against opponents on the same level in the MAIS allowed the program to flourish.

Now, Mathis hopes, it’s the start of a new era.

“I hope it’s a turnaround,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a transition. I hope it turns things around a little bit.”