Vicksburg High is shifting down and Warren Central is staying put in the latest round of reclassification by the Mississippi High School Activities Association.

Vicksburg will move from Class 6A to 5A, while Warren Central will remain in Class 6A for the 2025-27 reclassification cycle, the MHSAA announced Tuesday.

VHS had 597 students in grades 9-11, based on the totals from the Mississippi Department of Education that the MHSAA uses to set its seven classifications.

Vicksburg’s total was 102 fewer than in the 2023-25 reclassification cycle, when it was the smallest of 24 Class 6A schools. It is now the ninth-largest Class 5A school. Columbus is the biggest in 5A, with 655 students, and Sumrall is the smallest with 477.

Vicksburg was in Class 5A from 2013-22 before moving up in the current alignment. Vicksburg Warren School District athletics director James Lewis said he thinks Vicksburg High and Warren Central will both stay in their next classifications for a while.

“I don’t see it fluctuating too much to where we’ll significantly go up or significantly drop any more,” Lewis said. “I think for the next couple of cycles we may see a 6A Warren Central and a 5A Vicksburg. Even two years ago with Vicksburg getting in as the last 6A school, we kind of had an idea that when these new cycles come out they would probably drop and they did.”

Classes 5A and 6A each contain 24 schools, which are then divided into four regions of six each. Class 7A has 25 schools in this cycle because Murrah and Meridian, Nos. 24 and 25, both had the same number of students. Classes 1A through 4A contain 40 schools, and are split into eight regions of five each.

The MHSAA reclassifies its schools every two years, then sets regions based on a geographical north-south split and mileage between schools. Regions are the same for all sports, except a few like swimming that do not have enough teams participating and have their own classification system.

Vicksburg will be in Region 2-5A with Cleveland Central, Holmes County Central, Florence, and Jackson schools Provine and Lanier. It’s a similar lineup to previous versions of Region 2-5A that Vicksburg was a part of from 2013-22.

“All of them are not too far trips. For (non-football) sports I think it’s really beneficial. You’re looking at basketball, volleyball playing in the middle of the week. Now you can get home at a reasonable time. Not 11, 12 o’clock like this last reclassification cycle,” Lewis said. “I think it’s going to be a lot of good. It’s going to help parents not have to come pick up kids so late.”

While Vicksburg is on the move, Warren Central will comfortably remain in Class 6A. It had 865 students in grades 9-11, slightly down from 889 for 2023-25 but still the fourth-largest in Class 6A.

Hancock is the biggest Class 6A school, with 929 students, and Long Beach is the smallest with 668. Oddly, no Class 7A schools moved down to 6A, but three — two of which ended up in Warren Central’s region — moved up from 5A.

Warren Central will also remain in Region 2-6A, albeit with some new rivals. Greenville and Canton will replace Vicksburg and Columbus, who both moved down to Class 5A. Ridgeland, Callaway and Neshoba Central will also stay with Warren Central in Region 2-6A.

Like with Vicksburg’s region, Lewis said the travel situation is better for Warren Central the next two years. Although WC will get a longer road trip to Canton instead of across town to Vicksburg, going 90 minutes to Greenville was preferable than a three-hour road trip to Columbus.

“In last year’s cycle a lot of coaches complained about travel and distance, and I think the MHSAA did a really good job this time of taking those things into consideration. Especially with smaller schools that have issues with buses and transportation,” Lewis said. “You have more teams in closer proximity so it’s not such a major task to get kids from Point A to Point B for athletic contests. I think that’ll help out a lot of school districts. It’ll help the budgets, it’ll help out transportation departments, it’ll help a lot of assets just to get to a game and back.”

MHSAA Class 6A
x-Moved up from Class 5A
Region 1
South Panola
Center Hill
Olive Branch
Grenada
Lake Cormorant

Region 2
Warren Central
x-Greenville
Ridgeland
x-Canton
Callaway
Neshoba Central

Region 3
George County
West Jones
Hattiesburg
Terry
Jim Hill
Forest Hill

Region 4
Hancock
x-Gautier
Pascagoula
Picayune
Pearl River
Long Beach
———
Class 5A
y-Moved down from Class 6A
z-Moved up from Class 4A
Region 1
y-Columbus
z-Caledonia
Lafayette
West Point
New Hope
Pontotoc

Region 2
y-Vicksburg
Cleveland Central
Provine
Holmes County Central
z-Lanier
Florence

Region 3
South Jones
Laurel
North Pike
Brookhaven
Natchez
z-Sumrall

Region 4
Vancleave
East Central
Stone
Wayne County
z-Purvis
z-Northeast Jones