Big changes are coming next season for Miss-Lou high school athletics, as all three major sports associations have reclassified.

Two area teams are moving up, and no one will face the exact same region they saw during the just completed season.

MHSAA

The newest reclassification of the Mississippi High School Activities Association saw no area teams move up or down, but saw plenty of changes for each region.

The Cathedral Green Wave will see the biggest change. After the merger of Mercy Cross and St. John to form a new, larger school, as well as Enterprise moving up, four new teams took their place to form an 11-team monster region.

Defending 1A champion Puckett, Pisgah, Pelahatchie and hated rival St. Aloysius all moved into Cathedral’s region, and head coach Ken Beesley said things could get interesting next season.

“It’s going to be real tough to make the playoffs,” Beesley said. “There are several top teams. Us, St. Al, Puckett, Bogue Chitto and Mount Olive were all in the playoffs last year. Not only did we keep the tough ones in our region, we’ve added several. If you make the playoffs next year you’re going to have to have a pretty good team, but if you do make the playoffs you might be able to advance, because from top to bottom our region might be tougher than any of them.”

Natchez High’s region saw very little movement, but that movement did make the region tougher.

Out is perennial whipping boy Forest Hill, who is moving down to 4A, and in is Terry, moving up from 4A after finishing as South State runner-up.

“We feel like it has gotten a little more competitive,” said head coach Lance Reed. “We took out Forest Hill and added the 4A South State runner-up. That’s how a 5A region is supposed to be.”

With a team still fighting to find its way into the playoffs, Reed said he wouldn’t let the district becoming tougher bother his team.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with us,” Reed said. “We’re just going to take care of our business and try to win ballgames. We don’t look at it as affecting us at all. We look at it as competing with quality teams.”

With only one week left open for non-district play, Beesley said he was unsure of how the Green Wave would handle scheduling.

“Last year we had the classic game with St. Al,” he said. “In order to get all 10 games in, we’re going to need to start the week we did the classic game. Each team is going to have one off week. I think ours is the ninth or 10th week of the season. I’m not sure yet whether we’ll try to fill that.”

In other interesting news, Franklin County, Jefferson County and Wilkinson County will now all compete in the same district after Jefferson County moved out of its region from last season.

LHSAA

After two straight seasons of missing the playoffs, the Vidalia Vikings must now move up a classification.

The Vikings will move from 2A to 3A in the Louisiana High School Athletic Association, but, strangely, head coach Dee Faircloth thinks they might have an easier go of it.

“When you look at it, who’s in 2A?” Faircloth asked. “You’ve got John Curtis, and Evangel and Calvary Baptist are moving up there. You know who’s going to win 2A. It’s going to be one of them, probably John Curtis. That’s one good thing about 3A. Everybody’s going to have a shot, and that’s not the case in 2A.”

Early meetings had placed Vidalia in a district with the likes of Rayville and Jena, but politics moved the Vikings into a much easier region.

Vidalia has instead been placed with Avoyelles, Bolton, Buckeye, Bunkie and Marksville.

“We dodged a bullet,” Faircloth said. “We didn’t want to get in there with Rayville and Richwood. We’ve been there, done that, don’t want to do it again. This is a good district for us.”

Ferriday, on the other hand, faces a much tougher draw with Vidalia and Madison Parish moving up. Lake Providence will still be in their district, but so will Farmerville, Jonesboro-Hodge and Sterlington (who pounded the Trojans at Ferriday this year).

Head coach James McFarland said he was excited about the prospect.

“I like the new district,” he said. “I would’ve preferred if we could’ve gotten a six or seven team district. It would have made scheduling easier.”

McFarland said he wasn’t concerned about the added competition.

“It’s a tougher district,” he said. “But I don’t worry about that. The way I look at it, we had a tough schedule anyway.”

With Vidalia moving out of the district, the two rivals will now play the third week of the season, but McFarland said he didn’t expect it to change anything about the rivalry.

“We’re still going to be a rivalry,” he said. “There’s not going to be as much at stake as far as playoffs go, but anytime we play Vidalia in anything it’s a big game. The fans don’t care about that at all.”

Block’s district remained the same in Class A.

MPSA

The Mississippi Private School Association’s reclassification has not been made official yet, but reliable word has emerged that the Trinity Saints will move back to AA after a championship season in Class A.

The new district in AA is rumored to include ACCS, Trinity, Riverfield, Prairie View and River Oaks.

Trinity head coach David King said he wasn’t very happy with the results, but would make the most of it.

“I’m not excited about it, but it’s not anything that we can do about it,” King said. “We were the smallest one (by enrollment in Class AA), and we were the smallest one last time. I hate it for my kids, but we’ll always battle to give our kids the best opportunity to win championships.”

ACCS head coach Bobby Marks said the new district should be tough.

“River Oaks has a pretty good team every year,” he said. “They were down this year some. There are going to be some tough teams in this district.”

The new district would also resume the Trinity-ACCS rivalry after a year off, and Marks said he was looking forward to renewing the rivalry.

“I’ve been playing Trinity all my life, but not every year,” he said. “I think it’ll be good. I don’t know how good of a game it’ll be, but it’ll be a good gate. We’re both losing a bunch of seniors, but the last time we played it was the biggest crowd we had all season. It’ll be exciting.”

“(ACCS is) twice the size of our school,” King said. “Every school we’ll play will be twice our size. There’s a lot of disadvantages to this, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.”

One school that looks to benefit from Trinity (as well as River Oaks) no longer being a part of Class A is Huntington, and head coach Chad Harkins said he is looking forward to next season.

“I like our odds next year,” Harkins said. “Hopefully we can build on what we did last year, and we can make a little deeper run than we did this year. We had a lot of kids learn a lot last season.”