By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

MOSS POINT — With the 85th annual “Battle of the Cats’ on tap Friday night, pitting longtime arch-rivals Pascagoula and Moss Point against one another, we take a look back at yet another type of “historic” meeting between the Tigers and Panthers.
And that came 32 years ago today, in 1993, which was the only season since the all-time series started 100 years ago in which the two teams faced off twice in the same campaign.
In the rarest of oddities, the Tigers and Panthers played in the opening game of the season on Fri., Aug. 27th and then also met again 10 weeks later in the at that point customary regular season finale slot.

“It was something that had never been done before, so it was really kind of strange,” Ricky Cunningham, a 1987 graduate of MPHS and longtime Tiger fan said. “At that point it was a really competitive series. If I remember right the teams had split the series evenly over the past several years, so that made it even more odd to a lot of us. Pascagoula was outstanding in the late 1980’s, but Moss Point was really turning into a powerhouse at that point in 1993 and Pascagoula paid the price.”

And Cunningham was correct. Even though MPHS was coming off of a state championship just two years earlier in 1991, the two teams had split the past six games, beginning with a win by the Panthers during Pascagoula’s undefeated state title run in 1987.
The weirdness began some seven months earlier, when both then MPHS mentor Jerry Alexander and then PHS head coach Bill Matthews were both having problems filling a full 11 game schedule for the upcoming 1993 season because of the tremendous amount of success their respective programs were enjoying at the time on the gridiron.

According to published reports, a casual conversation took flight, and suddenly, both men started batting the idea around seriously.
“We both had the first playing date open, and get to start practice a week early,” Matthews told this sportswriter in early March of that year. Back then, if a team didn’t have a game scheduled for that opening week it couldn’t start fall practice until the second full week of August (on Aug. 9th) as opposed to the first full week (on Aug. 2nd).
“This way we each get an extra game and we get to start practice a week early.”
Alexander felt the same.
“It was kind of a mutual agreement between coach Matthews and me,” he said. “We have had a lot of problems finding people to play, and so have they. We felt like playing the first game close to home without having to travel 300 miles away would be better for both teams.”

The first game was billed as a “Building Fund” game for the Mississippi High School Activities Association back then. While it did count in the overall won-loss record for the two teams, it didn’t count as a region game. The second game counted in both categories like normal.
In 1993, both MPHS and PHS were members of Region 4-5A.
“It’s pretty unusual, but we both just felt like it would be beneficial to both teams.

Despite trailing 3-2 at halftime in the first game, MPHS stormed back to thump PHS 32-3 at home in Dantzler Stadium. Ten weeks later, the game was much closer as the Tigers nipped the Panthers 20-18 at War Memorial Stadium.
Moss Point ended up 11-2 overall that year, and fell in the Class 5A South State semifinal round to home-standing Warren Central 24-10.
Pascagoula, meanwhile, went just 3-7 in the regular season but also qualified for the playoffs. The Panthers opened the Class 5A South State playoffs on the road at Warren Central, and fell to the Vikings 52-22 exactly one week before WCHS ended Moss Point’s season.
The Vikings then beat Clinton on the road 27-6 to win the Class 5A South State title, before being throttled by South Panola 42-28 in the overall state title tilt.