If you’re looking for a way to burn off some of those holiday pounds this winter, the Vicksburg Warren School District has the perfect solution — basketball.

Not playing a game. Attending one.

Construction at Warren Central and Vicksburg High has disrupted parking and turned the schools into obstacle courses. Waiting at the end are security guards taking up admission fees, but they might need to start posting them in the parking lots with maps on how to get into the gym.

The parking lot on the Drummond Street side of Vicksburg High is closed, forcing fans to park in the smaller Confederate Avenue lot that fills up quickly. Overflow parking is available on the street and in the band hall lots, but that also requires fans to walk a couple hundred yards or navigate a steep hill.

If you’re attending a game this season, bring supplies — flashlights for sure, and maybe some rations and ropes. There is no easy way up the hill from the band hall lot, especially if you try to take the shortcut over the grassy berm in the dark.

All of that is just to get to the front door. Once inside, fans need to walk down another hallway and a set of stairs to arrive at the gym itself.

Warren Central is flatter, but also provides a quest worthy of its own “Lord of the Rings” book. Its primary parking lot is about 50 yards from the school and, once there, fans need to go through one building, across a small courtyard to a hidden side door, and then back down another hallway to the gym.

Thankfully, there are signs pointing adventurers in the right direction and no hostile orcs or wolves lurking around. I still get the feeling there might be distress calls from those who make wrong turns. Perhaps years from now a skeleton will haunt Warren Central’s band hall, mistaken for a forgotten Halloween decoration but in reality the remnants of a poor soul who just wanted to see the Vikings play Jim Hill on a chilly Tuesday night and met his doom in a darkened hallway.

Years from now, we might have some fond memories of this era. It’s a temporarily permanent solution that will exist through the rest of this season and perhaps the next one or two until work is complete.

In the meantime, get your season tickets for the Gators and Vikings and prepare to feel the burn. Those calories will melt away faster than a half-inch of snow from a Mississippi blizzard.

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