VIDALIA, La. &045; Folks on this side of the river may not have necessarily been too surprised to see Tony Hawkins rise to the role of leader for the Vidalia Vikings in basketball.

In fact, they weren’t.

Here is a guy who has been a leader in the past in football, starting two years at quarterback and leading his team into the playoffs both times. So when it came time to toss the helmet and pads away from shorts and sneakers, things really didn’t change that much.

Hawkins, like any true competitor, stepped up and led a Vidalia team that didn’t have as much talent from the previous season to one step away from a second straight trip to the Top 28 with a 19-3 record.

For that finish, Hawkins is the 2003-04 All-Metro Player of the Year. VHS head coach Robert Sanders is the Coach of the Year.

&uot;He’s a kind of competitor when the game is on the line, he wants the ball to be in his hands,&uot; Sanders said. &uot;You like to have players like that. Against Red River (at the Top 28) last year, he pretty much was our only scorer. One of the goals the team set for themselves was to get back there. They had all had a taste of it.&uot;

Hawkins, along with the nine other seniors on the roster, wanted to taste it just as bad anyone. The senior played a key role in the Vikings’ run to a Class 2A quarterfinal contest with Lakeview at home in a jam-packed VHS gym as the shooting guard.

But he finished up with a group of players he had come up with since ninth grade.

&uot;It was fun while it lasted,&uot; Hawkins said. &uot;We had a lot fun together, and it had to end somewhere. We had a good coach and played pretty good defense this year. That’s what helped us. I knew we had lost a lot of good players &045; Ajay (Warner), David (Walker), Josh (Bush) and Jesse (Lyles). We had to come out and work harder this year than we did last year.&uot;

Instead of on a team with five quality starters from a year ago and a true power forward in Walker, Hawkins found himself at a new position with a couple new faces on the floor. He moved to the shooting guard with C.J. Williams taking over as the point guard.

There were still expectations on this team with the players returning, but how far would they go?

Well, district was a start.

&uot;We expected to at least compete for district,&uot; Sanders said. &uot;We didn’t know what to expect from Lake Providence, we knew McCall would be a good team and with Ferriday being our rival, you never know what’s going to happen. Louis, Tony and C.J. did a pretty good job of keeping it together. Tony and Louis had to pick up (the scoring) slack.&uot;

The turnover from the previous season forced Sanders to shuffle the deck a bit, but Hawkins took to the position and made it look easy. He finished the season averaging 18.5 points, seven rebounds, five assists and four steals per game and was named the District 4-2A MVP.

Not bad for a guy who played point last year but still found his way to the basket and improved his defense.

&uot;Last year he was the point, and I played him at point his freshman year,&uot; Sanders said. &uot;When teams would press, he would handle the ball more. He really was (better on defense). I think he led us in steals out of the press. That was very important, especially in our full-court defense. We really had to do more this year. Last year we had Jesse, but this year we had to play more of a defensive mode.&uot;

It kind of came together for Hawkins, McNulty and the rest of the Vikings the best when they went down to face heavily favored Episcopal in the second round of the playoffs. Hawkins had just four points in that game but turned his defense up a notch along with the team.

McNulty, meanwhile, played perhaps one of the best games of his career against Episcopal post David Gomez in the Vikings’ 41-35 win.

&uot;That was a good game &045; a great game by Louis,&uot; Hawkins said. &uot;All everybody was hearing all week was Gomez, Gomez, Gomez. Louis just took the challenge. They had a real good half-court offense. They’ll pass the ball 30 times and three people would shoot the ball. We were able to stop their guards and play good defense for a couple minutes.&uot;

The win was one of the biggest upsets of the season in the Miss-Lou, one that the Vikings overcame some tough odds to advance in the postseason. The Vikings had to go on the road for that game and face the third-place team in a district that was arguably the most talented in all of Class 2A with eventual state champ University.

But like a team that had questions before the season, the Vikings just answered them that night.

&uot;Last year we had the big win over Port Barre, but that was at home,&uot; Sanders said. &uot;But going down there with their reputation and the district they played in, it was a pretty big win. We went into it basically thinking they had two scorers &045; Gomez and a guard. It was their tempo, and you had to adjust to play that tempo. It was one of our slowest games of the season. A lot of people were surprised we could play at that tempo.&uot;

Much of it was the competitor Hawkins, who took plenty of solace in going down there as the underdog. McNulty played a solid game in the post, and after that it was business as usual for a group of seniors who may have relied more on its chemistry than anything else.

&uot;We just had that chemistry,&uot; Hawkins said. &uot;We knew what each other was thinking. Louis started in the seventh grade, and we didn’t get a chance to play together until the eighth grade. We had to go as far as we could take the team.&uot;