It’s funny, in sports, how quickly a dynasty can come and go as talent ebbs and flows.

In the first decade of the 2000s, Vicksburg was one of the best high school baseball towns in the state. Starting with Warren Central’s Class 5A championship in 2001 through St. Aloysius’ back-to-back Class 1A title runs in 2009 and 2010, all four of our high schools at least played for a state championship. Porters Chapel Academy won three times, in 2003, ’06 and ’09, and Vicksburg High made it to the Class 4A finals in 2008 but lost.

The past five years have not necessarily been lean times, but more mediocre ones. All of our teams have continued to be playoff mainstays, just not championship contenders.

That looks like it might soon change.

Warren Central has emerged as a legitimate contender in Class 6A. It is 18-5 heading into Thursday night’s home game against Ridgeland and has beaten or lost close games to nearly all of the other top teams in the state.

Last week’s 5-2 win over Madison Central was a key indicator of how far the program has come. Warren Central had lost 20 of its previous 21 games against the perennially contending and talent-rich Jaguars, and hadn’t beaten them since 2012. Winning that game not only got a monkey off the Vikings’ back, it established them as a favorite in the North half of the Class 6A bracket.

The Vikings’ success isn’t built on one superstar, or a stacked lineup. There’s not a Division I signee on the roster — at least not yet. They’ve won this season by having a lot of very good players that they can swap out and not lose anything. Coach Conner Douglas rarely uses the same lineup two games in a row, not because players are struggling but because he’s trying to give 20 deserving guys playing time and put the best team on the field.

So far, it’s working to perfection. The Vikings are chewing through a difficult schedule like a combine through a wheat field. They have a bye in the first round of the playoffs and will face Olive Branch or Northwest Rankin in a best-of-three series next week.

That’s the start of another long and difficult road that ends about 50 miles away at Trustmark Park in Pearl. It’s been a while since Warren County’s high school baseball fans have had a good reason to visit there in mid-May. It seems like a fine time to go back.

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Ernest Bowker is a sports writer for The Vicksburg Post. He can be reached at ernest.bowker@vicksburgpost.com