If you ever want to get under a journalist’s thin skin, throw out the old jab, “You only wrote that to sell newspapers!” Or, in the modern age, “to get clicks.”

Well, of course we did. Getting people to pay to read what we write is our business. Nobody accuses McDonald’s of cooking food “just to sell burgers,” do they?

At the same time, in 27 years in this industry I don’t think I’ve ever written a story with that goal in mind. We go where the news takes us. Sometimes it’s boring and routine, sometimes it’s fun or salacious, but hopefully it’s always interesting enough to get you to plunk down $1.50 for a print copy of the paper or pay for an online subscription.

Actually, there is one exception to that.

A couple of years ago another media outlet was running an athlete of the week contest. The daughter of my wife’s friend was a nominee, and Shannon was enlisted as part of an online army to spam the vote.

Shannon spent the better part of a weekend clicking, refreshing, then clicking again while trying to push our candidate over the top. She was amazed watching the vote totals pile up into the thousands, and suggested that we should do something like this at The Vicksburg Post.

After some talks with the Powers That Be about how to make it work, The Vicksburg Post’s Athlete of the Week contest was born. It was partially a way to drive reader engagement — a fancy way of saying we were doing it to get clicks and sell papers — and it worked.

In the three years we’ve had the contest, more than 226,000 votes have been logged. Thanks to our readers, the contest has grown each year and is one of our most popular online features every week at vicksburgpost.com.

Like all of our other stories, however, it’s not just about getting clicks and selling papers. Another reason to start our Athlete of the Week contest was to recognize our local athletes for their successes in a new and fun way. It’s worked in that regard, too.

Our long-running “Who’s Hot” feature is great to spotlight a player of the day, and Athlete of the Week allows us to build on that. We’ve done our best to include nominees from every sport, boys and girls, schools in Warren County and the surrounding area, and a good mix of recurring stars and others who put it together for a couple of games.

During the 2024-25 high school sports year we had 100 athletes nominated across 11 different sports from seven schools and one youth sports organization. A total of 31 athletes took the weekly honor, with Vicksburg High football player DeCorey Knight Jr. and St. Aloysius basketball player Carson Gleese each winning twice.

The contest comes to a natural conclusion in early May, when the spring high school sports season peters out. But rest assured we will bring it back with a vengeance in late August once everything gets fired up again.

So as I always do in the weekly write-up announcing the winner, I’d like to say congratulations to this year’s nominees and winners and thank you to our readers for voting. Without all of you participating, Athlete of the Week obviously would not be as popular as it has become.

Let’s do it again next year and keep this train rolling.

•

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

2024-25 ATHLETES OF THE WEEK
SEPTEMBER
• Sept. 1 – Melissa Herrle, Warren Central volleyball
• Sept. 8 – DeCorey Knight Jr., Vicksburg High football
• Sept. 15 – Lauren Flowers, St. Aloysius volleyball
• Sept. 22 – Pierson Smith, St. Aloysius football
• Sept. 29 – Raphael Neal, Port Gibson football

OCTOBER
• Oct. 6 – Makynzie Dunmore, Vicksburg High volleyball
• Oct. 13 – Auston Moore, Porter’s Chapel football
• Oct. 20 – Ronnie Blossom, Warren Central football
• Oct. 27 – Jonah Artman, Warren Central football

NOVEMBER
• Nov. 3 – DeCorey Knight Jr., Vicksburg High football
• Nov. 10 – Jamarian Shelly, Warren Central soccer
• Nov. 17 – Jack Dickerson, St. Aloysius soccer
• Nov. 24 – Ryder Jones, Briarfield Academy football

DECEMBER
• Dec. 1 – Carson Gleese, St. Aloysius basketball
• Dec. 8 – Jadarius Henderson, Vicksburg basketball
• Dec. 15 – Anthony McCloud, St. Aloysius basketball

JANUARY
• Jan. 12 – Jacob Porter, Warren Central soccer
• Jan. 19 – James McKenna, Warren Central bowling
• Jan. 26 – Carson Gleese, St. Aloysius basketball

FEBRUARY
• Feb. 2 – Sydney Sullivan, Warren Central tennis
• Feb. 9 – Jordan Polk, Warren Central soccer
• Feb. 16 – Michael Evans, Port Gibson baseball
• Feb. 23 – Ellie Tennison, Warren Central tennis

MARCH
• March 2 – Clark Hobson, St. Aloysius baseball
• March 9 – Julia Moberley, St. Aloysius track
• March 16 – KeKe McKay, Warren Central softball
• March 23 – Tripp Gayle, Tallulah Academy baseball
• March 30 – Walt Andrews, St. Aloysius baseball

APRIL
• April 6 – Zion Knox, Vicksburg track and field
• April 13 – Harmony Harris, Vicksburg softball
• April 20 – Tyler Hatler, Porter’s Chapel track
• April 27 – Maddox Lynch, Warren Central baseball

MAY
• May 4 – J.T. McDaniel, Tallulah Academy baseball