By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

The first “Southern Six Senior Spotlight” of the new school year is St. Martin’s Monclair Brave.

Each week throughout the school year, we here at SouthMiss6 Sports will highlight a senior student/athlete in the “Southern Six” to honor. The weekly recognition is sponsored by Reese’s and The Reese’s Senior Bowl and Burnham Drugs of Jackson County.

Brave, a versatile senior standout for the Yellow Jackets, will see time time on both sides of the ball this season for head coach Ty Smith. He hauled in 39 passes for 438 yards a year ago.

Brave will play a much larger role during his final campaign for S. Martin after the departure of Noreel White, who signed with Ole Miss.

Brave is a multi-sport standout as well, and has been a starter on the Yellow Jackets basketball team since as sophomore also.

The home-standing Yellow Jackets look to snap a 17 game losing streak as they host the Bulldogs in an all Jackson County affair in the season-opener for both teams Friday night. The squads have split their last four meetings over the past 11 seasons but Vancleave has won two straight in the series including 42-7 last season.

The Reese’s company has long been a big supporter of former high school student/athletes.

For over a decade now, Reese’s® Peanut Butter Cups has been the title sponsor of The Senior Bowl played annually in Mobile, Ala.

In addition to its new partnership with the Senior Bowl, the Reese’s® brand is also the official candy partner of the NCAA® and the title sponsor of the National Association of Basketball Coaches’ Reese’s® College All-Star Game, which features the top Division I senior basketball student-athletes from around the country and is played the weekend of the NCAA Men’s Final Four®.

The 2025 Reese’s Senior Bowl will take place on Saturday, February 1, 2025 at 1:30 PM CT at Hancock Whitney Stadium in Mobile, Alabama. The game and practices will be televised on the NFL Network. 

The Reese’s Senior Bowl is widely regarded as the preeminent college football all-star game and the first stage in the NFL Draft process. The longest continual-running all-star game has taken place in Mobile, Alabama the past 75 years.  More than 900 NFL personnel, including key decision-makers from all 32 teams, and over 1100 media members from around the country were credentialed this year. This past April, the game produced 110 total picks, representing 43 percent of the entire NFL draft.