By By Austin Bishop / EMG regional sports director
September 17, 2004
Two down, five moved and a whole bunch more in limbo. That's the status of prep and junior college football in Mississippi this weekend.
As far Alabama, all of this week's prep football games have been postponed until the end of October or the first week in November.
The latest of the area games to be officially moved is the Division 4-4A showdown between Northeast Lauderdale and Northeast Jones. That game will be played in Jones County at 7 p.m. on Monday.
Enterprise's homecoming game against Newton High School has been moved to 7:30 p.m. on Saturday.
The only other area prep game that could be officially confirmed by press deadline on Thursday that has been moved is Kemper County's home game with Thomastown. That game will be played at 7 p.m. on Saturday.
On the junior college side of things all three of the area Thursday night games were moved to Saturday. East Central will now host Southwest Mississippi at 2 p.m., East Mississippi visits Itawamba at 1:30 p.m. and Jones visits Hinds at 3 p.m.
Back on the prep scene, the game in Biloxi between Clarkdale and homestanding Mercy Cross has been canceled and will not be made up, while the same is likely for the game that was scheduled for tonight in Ray Stadium between Meridian High School and St. Martin. While the game has been postponed, according to MHS athletic director Vince McLemore it has not been officially canceled. It would, however, be hard to find an acceptable date on which to make up the game.
As of Thursday afternoon West Lauderdale was still scheduled to play at Choctaw Central and Lamar School was set to visit Jackson Academy.
There has been some talk of moving Southeast Lauderdale's home game with Forest to Saturday, but nothing has been confirmed.
The Newton County-Quitman game is in some jeopardy. It is still set for tonight, but there is a possibility the site of the game could be changed to Decatur. If the game is not played on Friday night, it is not likely that the non-division game will be rescheduled. Both Quitman and Newton County have key division games next week, and would probably not want to play on Saturday or Monday.
Other games, including Philadelphia's home game with Taylorsville, Louisville's visit to Neshoba Central and Newton Academy's home date with CM&I, are still set to be played as scheduled.
In Alabama, all of the public school and private school games have been postponed.
The public school region games scheduled for this week will be moved to the last weekend of October, while the non-region games set for Oct. 28-30 will be pushed back one week. That will push the AHSAA playoffs back to Nov. 12 with the semifinals scheduled for Dec. 3 and the Super Six championship games being played Dec. 8-10 at Legion Field in Birmingham.
The Alabama Independent Schools Association is moving all of this weekend's games to Nov. 5, with the playoffs being pushed back one week. The championship games are set for Nov. 26 at sites to be named.