J.T. McDaniel had a Herculean effort in leading Tallulah Academy to the MAIS baseball semifinals and then did a lot more heavy lifting in The Vicksburg Post’s Athlete of the Week contest.

McDaniel received 3,787 of the 7,538 votes cast in an online poll of The Post’s readers to outrun Vicksburg High track athlete Amiyah Hall for the final award for the 2024-25 athletic year.

Hall finished second in a competitive race, with 3,455 votes. Porter’s Chapel Academy track athlete Schaffer Bell was third, with 433 votes, and Warren Central track sprinter Dwight Palmer came in fourth with 132.

J.T. McDaniel, a sophomore with Tallulah Academy’s baseball team, had 19 strikeouts and allowed four runs in 11 1/3 innings pitched in a playoff series win over Tensas Academy. He also batted .400 and scored three runs in the three-game series.

For the season, McDaniel is batting .551 with nine doubles, six triples, six home runs, 34 RBIs and 49 runs scored. As a pitcher he is 8-3 with a 2.59 ERA and 101 strikeouts in 62 innings.

Tallulah Academy (20-11) will host Wilkinson County Christian (13-10) in Game 1 of the MAIS Class 2A semifinals Wednesday at 6 p.m. Games 2 and 3 of the best-of-three series are Thursday beginning at 5:30 p.m. at WCCA in Woodville.

Congratulations to J.T., and all of this year’s Athlete of the Week winners and nominees. Thank you to our readers for voting, as well. More than 123,000 votes have been logged since September.

The end of the high school sports year will bring this season’s Athlete of the Week contest to a close. It will return in August for another season. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, and VicksburgPost.com for coverage of Warren County sports all year.