By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

LUCEDALE — The next five days or so will be important ones for the George County Athletic Department.

After a busy day on campus Wednesday for “National Signing Day” with several senior standouts signing football scholarships, the action will continue n Thursday as “Decision Day” arrives.
First up, Thursday is decision day for a big change at the top of the department as when the school board convenes that night a new Chief Operating Officer/Athletics Director is expected to be approved and announced soon after as well as a new Athletics Coordinator.
And, on Friday, the school is in all likelihood to announce that the head football coach position is open as well, due to the fact that current Rebel leader James Ray is expected to be promoted to the COO/AD position after Chris West was arrested and fired from that post several months ago.
Also on Thursday, soon after he receives the the High School Public School Coach of the Year” award from the Mississippi Baseball Coaches Association , GCHS head baseball coach Brandon Davis is expected to be named the new Athletics Coordinator as well.

Then, after the dust settles on all of that, on Monday according to a source within the MHSAA members of the newly realigned George County High Athletic Department will head to Clinton for an appeal hearing after the old regime lodged a formal complaint concerning the recent new region assignments that were released by the Mississippi High School Activities Association two weeks ago.

As some observers expected, upon reclassification for the 2025-2026 and 2026-2027 school seasons, after Pearl River Central had been playing in Region 3-6A for two years the Blue Devils were moved back down south to Region 4-6A and has been the case several times in the past two decades GCHS was moved up north to replace PRC in Region 3-6A in all sports and activities.
George County’s formal complaint deals mainly with distance issues. And, also that since West Harrison moved up a level to Class 7A in recent reclassification and Gautier moved up from Class 5A to Class 6A that the more natural move would be for GHS just to replace WHHS in Region 4-6A and keep things almost the same.

That same source within the MHSAA indicated that appeals are approved less than 15 percent of the time.

If GCHS remains in Region 3-6A it would compete against Hattiesburg, West Jones, Terry, Jackson Forrest Hill and Jackson Jim Hill in all sports. However, for the past two seasons Jim Hill has played as an “Independent” for football only purposes.

That would leave Region 4-6AA looking like this: Gautier, Hancock, Long Beach, Pascagoula, Pearl River Central and Picayune.

If the appeal is approved, however, then Region 6-4A would include Gautier, George County, Hancock, Long Beach, Pascagoula, and Picayune.

And Region 3-6A would look like this: PRC, Hattiesburg, West Jones, Terry, Jackson Forrest Hill and Jackson Jim Hill.

There is also a chance that officials with George County will attempt to convince the MHSAA to approve a seven team Region 4-6A as was done recently in Region 4-7A that kept Harrison Central from being shipped north and remain on the Coast.

In that case, then Region 4-6A would be comprised of would include Gautier, George County, Hancock, Long Beach, Pascagoula, PRC and Picayune.