First Round Scores

Class I

Clarkdale 7, Bogue Chitto 0 (Boys)

Loyd Star 6, Magee 0 (Boys)

Franklin County 6, Southeast Lauderdale 1 (Boys)

Wesson 3, Enterprise-Clarke 2 (Boys)

Enterprise-Clarke 4, West Lincoln 0 (Girls)

Loyd Star 7, Magee 0 (Girls)

Franklin County 2, Southeast Lauderdale 0 (Girls)

Clarkdale 2, Wesson 0 (Girls)

 

Class 4A

Poplarville 3, Lawrence County 2 (Boys)

Greene County 4, Lawrence County 0 (Girls)

 

MHSAA 5A First Round
Brookhaven High (17-5) at East Central (16-4) (Girls)

Brookhaven High (16-6) at East Central (9-9) (Boys)

Tuesday, Feb. 6 at East Central

5 p.m. (Girls), 7 p.m. (Boys)

 

For a second straight year, the Brookhaven High Panthers are traveling to Hurley to face East Central in a pair of playoff matchups.

In 2023, East Central won the opening girls’ match 7-0 and then took the boys’ contest by a 2-0 final score to eliminate the Panthers.

Both East Central squads come in as the second seed in Region 4-5A while both BHS teams finished third in Region 3-5A.

The Brookhaven High girls’ team is on a four-match win streak and boast a 17-5 regular season record, best in program history.
The only losses this season for coach Dustin Bairfield’s squad came against region foes South Jones and Florence and an early season defeat against Pearl High.

The East Central girls’ team and Stone High both finished with 9-1 region records, but Stone took top spot in the division by scoring two more goals than EC in their head-to-head matchups. EC has won six times in a row after losing 5-0 to Stone on Jan. 6.

The winner of this first round match will move on to face the winner between Vancleave (7-8-1) and Florence (16-4-1) in the second round.

Coach Aaron Ayers and the BHS boys’ squad are also having a historically good season and like their counterparts on the girls’ side, their only region losses were to Florence and South Jones.
Those three losses were all by a razor thing margin though as Florence beat BHS 2-1 in Rankin County in their first meeting and then knocked off BHS at home via penalty shots. The Panthers beat South Jones 1-0 and lost in a penalty shootout the first time the teams played in Ellisville.

East Central lost 2-1 to 4A Greene County in its last match. Stone High (15-4-3) won the region by finishing 10-0 in division matches.

The winner of this first round matchup goes on to face either Vancleave (7-7-3) or Florence High (12-8-2) in the second round.

 

MHSAA Class I Second Round

Loyd Star (16-5) vs. Sacred Heart (9-6) (Girls)

Loyd Star (18-3-1) vs. Saint Patrick (11-11-1) (Boys)

Tuesday, Feb. 6 at Loyd Star

5 p.m. (Girls), 7 p.m. (Boys)

 

After dispatching Magee High in the first round, coach Jordan Lea and his Loyd Star Hornets are back to home on Tuesday to host a playoff double-header against two parochial schools.

The opening match at 5 p.m. will see the Loyd Star girls’ team facing off with Sacred Heart Catholic out of Hattiesburg. Sacred Heart won Class I state titles in 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Sacred Heart beat Pelahatchie 7-0 in the opening round on Saturday. Two other parochial schools, St. Patrick and Our Lady Academy, finished ahead of Sacred Heart in the Region 8-Class I race.
The winner between Sacred Heart and Loyd Star will face either Our Lady Academy (8-7) or Enterprise-Clarke (14-7-1) in the third round.

It was a similar scene on the boys’ side of Region 8-Class I as Saint Stanislaus, a boarding school in Bay St. Louis, won the region with Sacred Heart Catholic capturing second place and St. Patrick, located north of Biloxi, finishing third.

Private and parochial schools such as Sacred Heart, Saint Stanislaus, St. Andrew’s, and St. Patrick have dominated Region I soccer at the championship level since the MHSAA began staging state championships for 1A-3A in 2000. The last non-parochial school to win a state title in Class I was the Southeast Lauderdale boys in 2015.

The governing body of high school athletics in Alabama, the AHSAA, uses a fair-balance system that forces their private and parochial members to move up a classification after meeting a certain metric of success at their original level.

The winner between Loyd Star and St. Patrick will move on to face either Sacred Heart (11-4-1) or Clarkdale (14-4-2) in the second round.

 

Wesson (8-7) at Saint Stanislaus (13-3-2) (Boys)

Tuesday, Feb. 6 at Saint Stanislaus

6 p.m.

 

The Wesson boys’ won a soccer playoff match for just the second time in school history on Saturday as they went on the road and defeated higher seeded Enterprise-Clarke 3-2 in overtime.

“It was a great win,” said Wesson coach Hank Jordan. “Enterprise scored two early goals in the first half, and we held them scoreless the last 80 minutes of the game.”

The Cobras got goals from JB James, Melvin Hernandez and Gavin Sandifer in the win.
“Melvin tied it up with less than two minutes to go in regulation and then Gavin scored the game winner about three minutes into the second half over overtime,” said Jordan.

The one previous playoff win in program history came in 2018 via a shoutout against Magee High.

St. Stanislaus beat McLaurin 12-0 in the first round on Friday. The Rock-A-Chaws won the 2022 state title with a victory of St. Andrew’s Episcopal.