High school football season may have ended weeks ago, but there is still one bit of business to take care of.

That’s right, it’s time again to honor the standout athletes in our area with the All-Metro football team. A story on the team will be published in the Christmas Day newspaper.

The players on the first and second team were determined based on statistics from the season. Though the Miss-Lou has many worthy athletes, the All-Metro team will represent those that stood above the rest.

We have also selected the All-Metro player and coach of the Year, which was very difficult this year due to many terrific seasons.

Two teams — Trinity and Ferriday — had undefeated regular seasons while two others — Franklin County and Centreville — made it to the state championship game with the Tigers winning it all.

Great players make great teams and success all around us comes the hard task of pinpointing the great players that made those teams what they are.

I would like to thank the coaches of the local teams for helping out in this difficult endeavor.

Each coach was asked to submit a maximum of five players for the team.

This made for some difficult situations for coaches. The five player limit meant that some teams had players make their All-District or even All-State team and not even be nominated for The Democrat’s All-Metro Team.

We had to set a five-player limit because choosing from the hundreds of qualified candidates would have been nearly impossible. And there would have been hundreds nominated too, because there were just that many great players in the Miss-Lou this season.

There were the six seniors who led Trinity on its magical season no one thought was possible. There was also the nine players from Ferriday who made the LHSAA Class 2A All-State team and the two-headed running back monster at Centreville which led the Tigers to the MPSA Class AA state title.

I could go on and on naming numerous players from almost every school in the area.

So when you open up The Democrat on Tuesday morning and flip to the sports page, you might be happy, surprised, upset or irritated at the selections you see in the paper, and that’s OK.

We tried our best to choose the players most deserving of the title. Others played well and had great seasons too,

Hats off to all our area athletes, you are all stars in our eyes.

Jeff Edwards is the sports editor of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3633 or jeff.edwards@natchezdemocrat.com.