The ebb and flow of the sports calendar in Warren County is kind of like a great song. There’s a build up to football season in August, the rockin’ first verse of football season in the fall, a chorus and bridge during the long winter months of basketball and soccer season, and another great verse as the weather warms up in spring.

And then, before you know it, it’s over and you want to hit the repeat button.
The song is over. After a three-week crescendo of state tournaments and playoffs in five spring sports, Warren Central’s spring football game at Northwest Rankin and the MAIS Class AAA tennis tournament at Halls Ferry Park on Wednesday were the last local high school sporting events of the 2018-19 season.

This is always a strange time of year. After an insanely busy month, everything comes to a dead stop in the blink of an eye. Nearly the entire sports scene in Vicksburg shuts down for two or three weeks, save for a few straggling youth baseball and softball games, until the summer tournament and workout season cranks up in June.

That makes it a good time to reflect on the sports year that was. This was a pretty good and memorable one.

All non-swimmers learned to resent the rain and water in general. The Red Carpet Bowl got rained out, a Warren Central vs. Vicksburg High basketball game was called because of moisture on the court, and St. Al’s track team had to run its state meet last weekend in a steady rain. Even this week’s spring football games were shuffled around because of the weather.

Our football state championship drought reached 25 years, but St. Al’s futbol team turned into a dynasty. The boys soccer team repeated as MAIS Class AAA champions and the girls team won its second state title in four years.

A half-dozen athletes won individual state championships in tennis and track and field, and four or five times that many signed to play in college in their various sports.

Some new coaches and star athletes arrived on the scene and others are moving on to bigger and, hopefully, better things.

It’s the cycle of sports, and the cycle of life. The middle of May and the end of another school year is when we hit the reset button on a lot of things and prepare to do it all over again. August will be here before you know it, and then we’ll cue up that song one more time.

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Ernest Bowker is the sports editor of The Vicksburg Post. He can be reached at ernest.bowker@vicksburgpost.com