After an extended, sizzling summer season we’ve lastly arrived at Week 1 of the highschool soccer season.

Or is it Week 2? Or Week 4? Isn’t subsequent week Week 1?

It’s getting exhausting to maintain observe as a result of this 12 months’s Mississippi highschool soccer schedule is a jumbled, complicated mess. The first reside motion was on Aug. 4, when MAIS groups performed managed scrimmages. Then, on Aug. 11, there have been 24 groups — together with Porter’s Chapel Academy and Tallulah Academy — who performed their regular-season openers whereas the remainder performed two-quarter preseason jamborees.

On Friday night time, your entire MAIS performed regular-season video games whereas MHSAA groups performed preseason scrimmages.
It’s not till Aug. 25 that we’ve a full statewide schedule of video games that matter, and even then some groups will in all probability elect to play on Aug. 24.

Thankfully, there’s one clear waypoint on the calendar that we will financial institution on yearly — the Red Carpet Bowl.

Vicksburg’s long-running soccer recreation will have a good time its 61st anniversary on Friday, Aug. 25, when Warren Central plays Clinton and Vicksburg High takes on Holmes County Central in a doubleheader at Vicksburg’s Memorial Stadium. The first recreation begins at 5:30 p.m. and the second at roughly 8. Tickets are $10 upfront or $15 on the gate, are good for each video games, and have to be bought on-line by way of GoFan.co.

The Red Carpet Bowl has not been resistant to floating across the schedule. It began as a postseason bowl recreation in 1962; was performed as a first-round recreation after the MHSAA moved to a playoff system within the early Eighties; and finally shifted once more to a season-opening doubleheader (and occasional tripleheader) within the early Nineties.

It has weathered all of these storms to endure and turn out to be not solely a Vicksburg custom, however a Mississippi one as effectively. A complete of 61 groups from Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Texas have performed within the Red Carpet Bowl in some unspecified time in the future.

Some of the colleges on that checklist not exist. Others have been many years away from current when it was based. The Red Carpet Bowl has all the time discovered a method to adapt and thrive, which is a credit score to everybody concerned.

The product you’ll see on the sphere subsequent Friday is, maybe, the simple half. Behind the scenes, months of planning and cooperation goes into pulling off a seamless night time of soccer. From the Vicksburg Warren School District graciously giving up a profitable house recreation for its two excessive colleges, to the safety of us and first responders maintaining everybody secure, and the RCB committee members who attend to the 4 groups, it’s all a well-orchestrated ballet. Years of expertise make it run like clockwork, but it surely’s all the time a large endeavor.

It’s additionally a really worthwhile one. The recreation funds scholarships in any respect 4 Warren County excessive colleges, often a couple of half-dozen price $750 every.

And, in fact, none of its potential with out the group’s help. The followers who purchase tickets and cheer on their groups make it each potential to maintain the sport alive and value it to the gamers and coaches by offering one among Mississippi’s finest and most original soccer experiences.

The Red Carpet Bowl is Vicksburg’s pageant of soccer and enjoyable, and it’s solely days away. Let’s pack out Memorial Stadium on Friday night time and make it an important one.

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Ernest Bowker is the sports activities editor of The Vicksburg Post. He could be reached at ernest.bowker@vicksburgpost.com

About Ernest Bowker

Ernest Bowker is The Vicksburg Post’s sports activities editor. He has been a member of The Vicksburg Post’s sports activities employees since 1998, making him one of many longest-tenured reporters within the paper’s 140-year historical past. The New Jersey native is a graduate of LSU. In his profession, he has gained greater than 50 awards from the Mississippi Press Association and Associated Press for his protection of native sports activities in Vicksburg.

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