As he sat in the team’s fieldhouse on Monday afternoon, waiting for practice and the game week to officially begin, Glenn Alan Kittrell was a ball of energy.

The senior running back loves football and is savoring his final high school season, but this week is one he — as well as his Porter’s Chapel Academy teammates, their opponents, everyone at the school and a lot of others around the city — have had circled on the calendar for a long time.

For the first time ever, PCA will play fellow Warren County school St. Aloysius in a regular-season football game. It’s the birth of a rivalry decades in the making, and the significance of that didn’t seem to be lost on anyone.

“I think this is probably the most hyped I have ever been. No doubt. It shouldn’t be, but it is. I know I’ve wanted this game since I was 13 because I know all the people that have come before us have wanted a chance at them, and we’ve got the chance,” Kittrell said.

The St. Al vs. PCA matchup is one players, coaches and fans on both sides have speculated about for years, but were never able to make happen.

Up until 2015, St. Al was a member of the Mississippi High School Activities Association and PCA a member of the Mississippi Association of Independent Schools. Teams in the two associations weren’t even allowed to play each other until the mid-2000s, and then scheduling difficulties kept it from happening once that barrier was removed.

The teams became regular opponents in all other sports, but St. Al typically had just one or two non-region playing dates on its football schedule and opted to fill them with existing rivalries against other Catholic schools rather than take on a new one with the private school across town.

Meanwhile, the fortunes of the two teams ebbed and flowed. Porter’s Chapel reached the state semifinals three times in four years in the late 2000s and then dropped off just as St. Al was turning into a power in the early part of this decade. St. Al’s run included two state semifinal appearances and one in the MHSAA Class 1A championship game, as well as two championships.

With both schools being similar in size but having different skill levels and competition, fans and players alike often compared their teams to each other. When St. Al left the MHSAA in 2015 to join the MAIS, it was almost inevitable that the schedule would shift and allow them to finally settle it on the field.

The teams played in a preseason scrimmage in 2016 that St. Al won easily, 43-0. Now comes the big one, a regular-season game that also counts in the District 3-AAA standings. It’s also in the spotlight locally as the only high school game in Vicksburg on Friday night. Warren Central has a bye week and Vicksburg High is on the road at Columbus.

“Every day you feel like something is added on to it,” Kittrell said. “They’re in our district, it’s a rivalry game, Warren Central’s not in town. You go into the grocery market and somebody tells you, ‘We’re coming,’ and they’ve never come to a Porter’s Chapel game in their life.”

Handling the history and hype leading up to this game will be just as important as handling blocking and tackling on the field, PCA coach Blake Purvis said.

“I think our schools and the whole town are fired up. I think it’s something everybody has wanted to see as long as these two schools have existed. Maybe more for me as an alum and a former player here,” said Purvis, who graduated from PCA in 2006 and was a two-year starter on its football team in his high school days. “We have to keep the emotions in check and realize it still is just a football game.”

And an important one at that.

St. Al (0-4, 0-1 District 3-AAA) and PCA (2-2, 1-1) both have one loss already in the district. Although a wild card playoff berth would remain a possibility, the loser will fall two games behind first-place Riverfield Academy (3-1, 2-0) and be all but eliminated from contention for the district championship.

Each of the five district champions receives an automatic berth in the Class AAA playoffs. The other 11 spots are wild cards that are filled through a power points system.

“We’re kind of in the same boat with the district wins and the records and all,” PCA defensive lineman McKinley Skipper said. “It ain’t going to be a walk in the park, but it’s like a playoff game to me because it’s the biggest game of the year. It’s going to be a lot of people here watching.”

It’s also a big game in terms of overall momentum. St. Al is running out of time to stop its slide and remain in even the wild card chase. PCA has alternated blowout wins and losses in its first four games and would like to start moving forward again following a 41-0 loss to Central Private last week.

Purvis called St. Al a sleeping giant with a lot of playmakers capable of giving his defense problems.

“They’ve got guys that, at any time they touch the ball, can take it to the end zone. You have to be disciplined and make tackles in space,” Purvis said. “Our defense can’t turn a bad play into an awful play. We have to contain it and keep it from going for a touchdown.”

Even with all of the on-field reasons why the game is important, however, Skipper said it still comes back to bragging rights and the off-field stuff that is providing the extra push this week.

“It’s big being the first time ever that Porter’s Chapel and St. Al have played. It’s a big rivalry game. I know the most important game is the next game but, really, we’ve been looking at this game all summer,” Skipper said. “We know it’s going to be a big one, with a great atmosphere and lots of people here, and we just have to go out with some intensity and momentum and want to win and I don’t think we’ll have a problem.”

FRIDAY’S AREA GAMES
All games start at 7 p.m.
St. Al at Porter’s Chapel (Radio: 101.3 FM/104.5 FM)
Vicksburg at Columbus (Radio: 1490 AM/107.7 FM)
Tallulah Academy at Prentiss Christian
Sharkey-Issaquena at Humphreys Academy
Briarfield at Rebul Academy
Hillcrest Christian at Central Hinds
Port Gibson at Yazoo City
Delhi at Madison Parish

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