NATCHEZ — Twenty-five new athletes are running around on Adams County Christian School’s football field.

But they aren’t wearing pads or helmets, and there is no pigskin in sight.

Instead, the Rebels have started a soccer team to give more students a chance to play sports.

“We’ve been talking about it for a number of years,” said new head coach Jimmy Allgood. “There are quite a number of kids who’ve played in younger leagues.”

ACCS becomes the final school in Natchez to add a soccer team.

And while right now they’re a co-ed team playing a mix of MPSA and public school teams, next year Allgood hopes to have a separate boys and girls team sanctioned by the MPSA.

Allgood said he started talking to athletic director and football coach Paul Hayles and the MPSA approximately a month ago about implementing a team, and 18 boys and seven girls from sixth to 12th grade are now playing soccer.

The Rebels played their first games in the Loyd Star Invitational Tournament in Brookhaven, where they won their first two matches before falling to Franklin County 2-1.

They also lost 8-1 in a scrimmage with Cathedral and at Franklin County, 6-2, before hosting their first game.

The Rebels fell 5-1 against Brookhaven Academy Tuesday.

“We played five 20-minute individual matches, and at the end of two matches the score was 2-1,” Allgood said.

The game almost didn’t happen, Allgood said, because Brookhaven’s bus was being used for a previously-scheduled field trip.

“But thanks to Barry Gray, the athletic director at Brookhaven, I don’t think the motor even un-cranked when it arrived back at their school,” he said.

“It dropped off the younger kids, and the soccer players loaded right up and came here.”

As Brookhaven was rushing to Natchez, Allgood and Hayles were rushing to transform a football field into a soccer field.

They, along with some of the athletes’ dads, measured lines and repainted the field as approximately 100 spectators appeared.

“(We painted) up until five minutes before game time,” Allgood said. “As it was turning 4 p.m., I think the last red spray paint of one of the penalty kick boxes was laid out.”

Allgood, who coached youth soccer for eight years, said students at ACCS were excited about the new team.

He called it a chance for kids who aren’t necessarily good at basketball, baseball or football to still get a chance to be active in school sports.

“The kids that have scored goals in the matches we’ve had so far, many of these kids have come to me and said, ‘Coach, this is the first time I’ve ever scored in anything,’” Allgood said.

“You would have thought these kids had won the Super Bowl. That in itself is tremendous in my eyes, to be part of that.”