By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

PEARL — For the first time since 2017, a prep baseball team from the most southeastern county in the state won’t be competing for a state championship here at Trustmark Park next week.
For the past seven full seasons, a squad from Jackson County has played for a state championship. In fact, in that span on seven different occasions four separate schools have competed for seven state crowns and won five.
However, East Central was the lone hope left if that streak was to continue coming into this week, and the perennial state power Hornets fell to South Jones in two straight games in the Class 5A South State championship round.

The Braves, in fact, were the main culprit in ending the annual stretch for the county. That’s because South Jones cut short defending Class 5A state champ Vancleave’s quest for consecutive crowns with a 4-1 decision in the third and final game of their Class 5A South State semifinal series and then moved on to sweep East Central.
Vancleave unseated its arch-rival atop the Class 5A ranks in the state last season, taking two out of three over Lafayette to claim the crown.

Before that, East Central won the Class 5A state title in back-to-back seasons in 2022 and 2023, and Resurrection won in those same campaigns.
The Eagles and their crosstown counterparts Pascagoula both played for titles in 2021. And just before the Covid stricken season of 2020, St. Martin played for the Class 6A state title in 2019 and Vancleave captured its first-ever state title in 2018.
So the impressive streak comes to an end for Jackson County, which has long been known for many decades as one of the top prep baseball hotbeds in the state of Mississippi.
In fact, prep baseball squads from Jackson County have won eight state championships in the past 17 years or so since the state championship series moved here to Trustmark Park.
And it seemed only fitting that the Hornets were the team left fighting to continue that streak as they have four state crowns overall, also bringing home titles in 2008 and in 1981.

In 2008, both the Hornets and the Ocean Springs Greyhounds brought state titles back home to Jackson County meaning that three times in the past 17 years Jackson County was the home of two state champions in the same season.
That, along with previous state crowns captured by Pascagoula (2012) and Vancleave means that over half of the eight prep baseball playing in Jackson County have at one point been crowned as state champions on the diamond.
“I’ve always said that Jackson County has a rich history of baseball at all levels but especially in high school baseball,” legendary head coach and player Johnny Olsen, a Pascagoula native, said. 
And Olsen should know. He is the only head baseball coach in the “Southern Six” to guide two different squads to state championships after leading his alma mater Pascagoula to the title in 1996 and then Resurrection to its first title in 2022.