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Georgia Sloan lived half her life in trauma and abuse when she started using drugs. 

Her mother was addicted. Her father was murdered when she was a child, and her stepfather was abusive. Drug overdoses took away her husband and brother, and while she was in jail her infant daughter died in an accident. 

Then at age 31 she stopped, setting her on a course for a new life. She got into treatment through Crossroads Ministries and started working at bath products company Musee in Madison County, passing weekly drug tests. 

In December, the 34-year-old was called back to court on an old drug charge, and Sloan hoped the judge overseeing her 2022 drug sale case would see that she was a changed woman. 

The answer was no. Lowndes Circuit Court Judge James “Jim” Kitchens opted for the maximum eight-year sentence with four years to serve and four years suspended. 

At the Dec. 4 hearing, he doubted whether nearly three years of sobriety and employment showed Sloan had changed. 

“I don’t see [a] contrite heart in you at all about this,” Kitchens said, according to a transcript of the sentencing. “You’ve convinced the ladies here that you’re a great employee. And I’m proud of that. That’s a good thing. But now, I’ve got to sentence you.”

When reached by Mississippi Today, Kitchens would not comment and told the reporter to request a transcript of the hearing. 

A driving force behind committing to sobriety and rehabilitation was her older daughter, whom Child Protective Services threatened to take from her and has lived with Sloan’s mother and aunt. Sloan was preparing for her child to come live with her at the beginning of the year. 

“I did everything asked of me,” Sloan said in a Feb. 7 phone interview from jail. 

As of Monday, she was at the Mississippi Correctional Institute for Women at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl. Sloan was at the Lowndes County Detention Center in Columbus for about two months before her transfer. 

At least six times during the hearing, Kitchens said by choosing to sell drugs, Sloan was “(making) other people addicts,” according to the court transcript. 

The judge asked if she knew a man, unrelated to her case, who used what he suspected to be heroin but was likely fentanyl, killing him. Kitchens said he has attended funerals of people he’s ordered from drug court who died from Fentanyl overdoses. 

“That’s the problem,” Kitchens said. “There has to be some ability to have empathy for people who were not addicted.”

Sloan says she is committed to maintaining her sobriety in prison and jail. She doesn’t think prison is the place to be for someone with addiction – especially in an environment where there are known to be drugs. 

“I felt like this was not rehabilitation at all,” Sloan said about the sentence, saying she would have preferred placement in a work program so she could serve the community in some way. 

Lynn Conner, court administrator for Kitchens, wrote in a Feb. 13 email that Sloan was referred to drug court, but the drug court’s coordinator denied the referral. 

At the hearing, Sloan asked if she was eligible for drug court and the judge said she was not because of former drug sale convictions. 

Sloan hopes to make the best of her time in prison. She wants to enroll in a business course and she is excited to share her story, which could help others stop using drugs and find Christ. 

With four years to serve, she expects to be eligible for parole within a year. 

Nearly a quarter of the 77,000 women in state prisons are incarcerated for drug convictions, according to the Prison Policy Institute, which along with property offenses make up more than half of all the offenses for which women are incarcerated. 

Trauma and abuse are among the underlying causes of substance use, according to research cited by the Prison Policy Institute, and many women engage in criminal behavior as a way to support their drug use. 

Sloan’s addiction began at age 14 when she was prescribed opioid pain medications after breaking her back, according to court records. 

Within a few years she began to buy drugs from off the street. Over the next decade, she was sentenced to probation or prison for several drug possession and sale charges. 

Leisha Pickering, Sloan’s boss at Musee, accompanied Sloan to her court hearing in Columbus, and along with Crossroads’s executive director, Wendy DeMoney, testified on Sloan’s behalf. They thought the judge would allow her to avoid incarceration through drug court or house arrest. 

At the hearing, according to the court transcript, Kitchens drew a parallel from the Bible, about how every seven years there is a jubilee year, and how every seven years since 2007 Sloan was in trouble with drugs. 

The judge questioned Sloan for a 2015 case he handled in which he sentenced her to eight years in prison and to complete a drug and alcohol treatment program. 

Several months into that sentence, Sloan wrote a letter to Kitchens, asking him to reconsider her sentence and release her from jail to mourn her younger daughter, who died from an accident as an infant. 

“This is no place to grieve the loss of a child,” Sloan wrote in an Aug. 17, 2017, letter included in court records. “… Let me prove to you and myself that I can turn my life around.”

Sloan was paroled in November 2018, according to court records. 

After her release, Sloan said she spiraled and her addiction reached the point where someone had to intervene in order for her to get help. Kitchens asked why she needed to “commit a new felony” rather than get help for her drug addiction, as other people he has sent to rehab have done, according to the court transcript. 

Pickering recognizes that there are women like Sloan in the criminal justice system who struggle with addiction and trauma.

Musee’s goal is to employ groups of people, such as formerly incarcerated women, to give them a way to work in their community, create something with their own hands and find their own value. 

To meet that goal, the company partnered with Crossroads and has employed over 200 women who are participating in the nonprofit’s programming, Pickering said. 

Sloan said her mother and former Parole Board chairman Steve Pickett helped her get to Crossroads, which was the best decision she made because it led her to sobriety and work at Musee. The company took a chance on her – something nobody had ever done. 

“That’s all I needed in my life,” Sloan said. “I never had that feeling that I could be someone or be something.” 

While going to Crossroads, Sloan started cleaning at Musee’s office and warehouse and within two years was promoted twice. Her most recent role was working at the front desk and directly with clients, and Pickering said she was up for another promotion. 

Musee’s staff was devastated by Sloan’s incarceration and has felt her absence. They continue to add money to an account for her to make and receive phone calls, and they can check in with her. 

In a few weeks Sloan will be processed at the prison and able to have visitors, and her supporters plan to see her. 

“We just don’t want to see her fall,” Pickering said.

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Two bills imposing strict limits on when people can be jailed without criminal charges while they await mental health treatment are headed to the House and Senate floors. 

Both measures would allow counties to jail people during civil commitment proceedings only if alternatives such as local hospitals and crisis stabilization units are unavailable, and would restrict such jail detentions to no more than 24 hours. They would also require a mental health screening to take place before a person can be taken into custody– a proposal intended to reduce the number of commitments by connecting people with outpatient treatment options instead whenever possible. 

“We need to get the mentally ill out of our jails,” said Sen. Nicole Boyd, R-Oxford, as she introduced SB 2744 to the Judiciary A Committee on Tuesday afternoon. 

Her bill cleared the committee with no opposition. Last week, HB 1640, with similar language, passed out of the House Public Health Committee, also with no opposition. 

The legislation follows reporting by Mississippi Today and ProPublica that hundreds of Mississippians are jailed every year without criminal charges while they await mental health evaluations and treatment. Since 2006, at least 17 Mississippians have died while jailed during commitment proceedings. Earlier this year, 48-year-old James Tatsch died after being found unresponsive in the Alcorn County Jail, where he had been held with no criminal charges for 12 days.

House Public Health Chairman Rep. Sam Creekmore, who authored HB 1640, appeared to reference Tatsch’s death in describing part of his legislation that requires a hearing within five days of a person’s commitment examinations. Under the current law, the hearing can take place within 10 days of those examinations.

“There are cases in our state recently, had this been in place, some patients would still be alive,” Creekmore said. 

As the bills proceed, county officials are likely to raise concerns about costs, since jailing people is far cheaper than paying for their hospitalization. Neither SB 2744 nor HB 1640 includes new funding for treatment beds or facilities or money to help counties comply. 

While the state has expanded publicly funded crisis stabilization units in recent years, chancery clerks and law enforcement complain that they frequently turn patients away because they deem them “violent” or requiring a higher level of care. If no public bed is available, counties may be on the hook to pay for treatment at a private facility. 

During the Judiciary A meeting on Tuesday, Boyd referenced recent reporting by Mississippi Today that the nonprofit Disability Rights Mississippi plans to sue the state and some counties over the practice of jailing people on the basis of mental illness. 

“The state is facing litigation because we are continuing to put those that are mentally ill in our jails, and I think this will go a long way in making sure that we work through this,” she said.

On Tuesday, Disability Rights Mississippi Executive Director Polly Tribble reiterated her stance that any jail detention is too long for people who haven’t been accused of a crime. 

She asked who would monitor whether counties are meeting a 24-hour deadline to get someone out of jail, pointing out that the Department of Mental Health currently tracks such detentions and their length only after someone has had a commitment hearing and is waiting on a state hospital bed.

“There are just too many questions,” she said. “We are mandated to protect the rights of people with disabilities and we intend to do just that.”

The committee substitutes of HB 1640 as well as SB 2477 contain a measure that would continue to allow detentions in any jail that is certified as a holding facility by the Department of Mental Health. Jails with that certification must meet health and safety standards and be regularly inspected by the agency.

In public health hearings earlier this year, Department of Mental Health director Wendy Bailey told lawmakers that reforming the civil commitment process to restrict jail detentions is a top priority of the agency this session. 

“We’ve been supportive of changes to the commitment process, including restrictions on the use of jail as a holding facility and a pre-affidavit screening process that is in this legislation,” said Adam Moore, a spokesperson for the Department of Mental Health, on Tuesday. 

The Senate legislation also increases state oversight of the community mental health centers, the independent regional organizations responsible for providing safety net mental health care close to home. 

Specifically, Boyd’s bill would require the Department of Mental Health to create a rating scale for the centers and conduct a performance review audit at least every two years. After a six-month probation, the agency could replace a failing center’s director.

Dave Van, the executive director of Region 8, the community mental health center that serves Madison, Rankin and other counties in central Mississippi, said he thinks SB 2744 makes significant changes that could have unintended consequences. He said community mental health center directors and commissioners, along with county supervisors, weren’t sufficiently involved in the creation of the legislation.

“I just think it’s completely turning the mental health system upside down in a small amount of time without any research or input from all the players that provide the service, the boots on the ground,” he said. “Maybe it needs to be turned upside down. I’m just not sure.”

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House leaders said they have tried to address concerns of educators in their latest attempt to rewrite the longstanding formula that determines the amount of state funds provided to local school districts for their basic operation.

The latest version of the legislation, which passed the House Education Committee on Tuesday, includes an inflation factor and a committee that includes eight school superintendents that would make binding recommendations to the Legislature on the amount of money local school districts should receive. The committee also would include five representatives of the Mississippi Department of Education.

“This bill is as close to getting to equitable funding as we can get in this state,” said Education Chair Rob Roberson, R-Starkville, who is the primary author of the proposal dubbed the Investing in the Needs of Students to Prioritize, Impact and Reform Education (INSPIRE).

The legislation would replace the longstanding Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which was passed in 1997 but has been fully funded only twice since its full enactment in 2003. Proponents of the legislation say the new House proposal is more equitable than the Adequate Education Program, providing more funds for special education, for poor students and for those learning English as a second language.

But some public education advocates and others have long been wary of legislative efforts to rewrite the funding formula over concerns lawmakers want to gradually spend less money on schools.

READ MORE: The fate of the House school funding plan could come down to one question: Who wrote it?

House Education Vice Chair Kent McCarty, who also worked extensively on the INSPIRE proposal, said the program would pump almost as much money into education as MAEP if the current formula was fully funded.

MAEP, at full funding for the upcoming fiscal year, would cost $2.99 billion. INSPIRE’s total cost would be $2.96 billion.

The proposal passed the House Education Committee in a voice vote on Tuesday with no one voting against, though it was apparent that some members did not vote. The bill will be taken up by the full House in the coming days.

The Senate Education Committee, conversely, has passed legislation that “tweaks” the current MAEP, making it cost a little less to fully fund.

One member of the House Education Committee, Rep. Percy Watson, D-Hattiesburg, said of INSPIRE: “I don’t think I can support it. I am a supporter of the current program. We have a good formula with MAEP if we fund it.”

READ MORE: Education groups urge lawmakers to keep objective formula in place for school funding

Multiple education groups previously expressed concern that the House language did not include an objective criteria to determine the base student cost. MAEP’s base student cost is determined by factoring the cost to educate a child in an efficiently operated adequate school district. That formula is calculated every four years and during the intervening years a modest growth or inflation factor is added to the base student cost, and the school districts receive the base student costs times their average daily attendance. Under MAEP, poor districts receive more for the base student cost than more affluent districts do.

House leaders, in an effort to appease education advocates, tweaked the INSPIRE bill to include eight superintendents — half from large districts and half from small districts across the state — on a committee that would provide legislators a base student cost every four years. In intervening years, a modest inflation factor would be added to the base student cost.

McCarty said legislators should be held accountable for not fully funding education any year they do not provide the level of funding called for by the independent committee made up of local superintendents and Department of Education officials.

The base student cost in the House bill is set at $6,650 – about $800 less than the base student cost for MAEP for the upcoming year if it was fully funded. But the House bill adds significantly more money for those students deemed to cost more to educate.

McCarty pointed out that the Senate has proposed changes to the MAEP program that would make it generate about $40 million less for schools than would the House plan.

During the committee meeting, Watson asked if any out-of-state groups had worked with the House leadership in developing the plan. McCarty said he worked with Roberson, Rep. Jansen Owen, R-Poplarville, and other House members to develop the House bill without any input from out-of-state groups.

Mississippi Today reported earlier on Tuesday that outside groups that have advocated for vouchers and charter schools and other types of school choice in the past also worked on developing a rewrite of MAEP, and that rewrite included many of the same elements as the new House bill. Additionally, House leaders including McCarty have used a password protected website developed by those groups with the help of an out-of-state consulting group to run calculations of how much money varying versions of their newly proposed formula would produce per school district.

McCarty said that the sole purpose of the new formula is to equitably allocate funds and that the MAEP no longer does that, pointing out that the House bill provides extra help to poor school districts. Under the bill, some wealthier school districts would receive less funds than they got this past year when MAEP was underfunded about $175 million.

“We appreciate the improvements they have made to the bill,” said Nancy Loome of the Parents Campaign, who was among a group of educators who said any rewrite should include an objective formula. “But we still have big problems. For instance, it does not include an objective formula to determine the base student cost.”

READ MORE: Speaker Jason White says House will work to scrap, rewrite public education funding formula

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Senate Republican leaders continue to keep any particulars of their Medicaid expansion plans close to the vest, with a committee passing only a shell of a bill Tuesday to meet a deadline and keep it alive.

Meanwhile, a Medicaid expansion bill the House passed last week sits untouched in the Senate, and the two Republican-led chambers do not appear to be in sync on the issue.

Senate leaders have said they are dead set on any expansion of Medicaid coverage including a work requirement for recipients. This would require federal approval, which many say is unlikely. The House version includes a work requirement, but says the program would still be expanded even if the feds don’t approve a work requirement.

“If no work requirements, no expansion,” Senate Medicaid Chairman Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven, said about the bill he calls “expansion light.”

Senate Bill 2735, authored by Blackwell, remains only a skeleton bill bringing forth the code sections necessary to expand Medicaid, with details to be hashed out later.

On Tuesday, Blackwell spent 25 seconds explaining the bill to committee members and 15 seconds counting a committee vote. Rita Potts Parks, R-Corinth, was the only No vote. 

No questions were asked in committee. 

Blackwell said the Senate measure, like the House plan, likely would raise the income eligibility for Medicaid coverage to 138% of the federal poverty level, up to about $20,000 annually for an individual. He said the plan would likely require Medicaid expansion recipients to pay premiums on a sliding scale based on income. 

READ MORE: ‘Moral imperative’: House overwhelmingly passes Mississippi Medicaid expansion

Mississippi is one of 10 states that has not expanded Medicaid to cover the working poor with the federal government picking up at least 90% of the cost. For the last decade, most Republican leaders, including now Gov. Tate Reeves, have decried expansion as “Obamacare” and “welfare” and the issue has not even garnered serious discussion or hearings in recent years.

But polls have shown growing support for expansion — even among Republicans — as Mississippi’s hospitals founder from providing free care to the uninsured and the state continues to have health statistics and outcomes that rival Third World areas.

New Republican House Speaker Jason White supports expansion, and second-term Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has said he’s open to it and wants to help create a healthier workforce in Mississippi.

A prerequisite that Mississippi’s plan have a work requirement could kill its expansion. During the Biden administration, federal Centers for Medicaid Services has rescinded work requirements previously approved for other states during the Trump administration and has not approved new ones. Georgia remains in litigation with the federal government over the work requirement issue.

Blackwell and other Senate Republicans realize the realpolitik of getting a work requirement approved, and say implementing expansion could perhaps be pushed back until after this year’s presidential election, so a new administration might approve a work requirement.

While both House and Senate leaders say they support a work requirement, the one in House Bill 1725 – which overwhelmingly passed the House – is only a “best-case scenario.” The bill has a provision that if federal authorities do not approve the waiver necessary to allow a Mississippi work requirement by Sept. 30, 2024, Medicaid would still be fully expanded to people up to 138% of the federal poverty level, starting in January 2025. 

Blackwell said he doesn’t believe an expansion bill could garner the votes it needs from the Senate without the work requirement.

“Their [House] bill has a component, the first section, for the working people,” Blackwell said. “But if CMS comes back and says they’re not going to accept that, it’s traditional expansion. And we’re not going to get that passed over on this side.” 

Senator Chad McMahan, R-Guntown, a member of the Medicaid committee, said he is in favor of expansion — both because he knows his constituents support it, and also because of his personal experiences growing up in a low-income, working-class family.

“I came from a family that didn’t have health insurance for a number of years,” McMahan said, “and I saw the fear in my mom and dad’s face when I got hurt and they had to decide about paying a car note, paying a house note or paying medical bills. And that’s why I’m sympathetic to the legislation. Working people in this state need a safety net, they need a way to access some basic medical care.”

But he said he would have a hard time supporting an expansion bill that had no work requirement.

“There’s a difference between just giving handouts and giving people a hand up to help them,” McMahan said. “I want to provide the working people of this state an opportunity to have some type of health care if their employer doesn’t provide that.”

Blackwell said the Senate bill could perhaps contain language and dates to allow a new presidential administration to take office — and approve a work waiver — before expansion would start.

“I’d love for there to be a change and I think the rest of the country would love for there to be a change,” he said. “We’ll just have to see whatever timeframes we put in are going to try to accommodate that potential change.”

McMahan said, “I think the work requirement is a big piece of it for Republicans. It’s got to be a helping hand. We have the lowest work participation rate in the United States. And if we can figure out a way to help people go to work and provide some health care, I’m for that.”

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A Senate committee on Tuesday advanced a measure that would allow Mississippi voters to cast ballots — in person — for 15 days prior to an election, including the Saturday before.

“Mississippi is one of only three states that doesn’t allow early voting,” said Senate Elections Chairman Jeremy England, a Republican from Vancleave and author of SB2580. “… This just allows more access to the ballot in a very secure way … This would help so many — doctors, first responders, others, some single parents.”

The bill passed the committee on a voice vote Tuesday, the deadline for such action on the bill.

Mississippi allows in-person absentee voting before elections, but voters must meet criteria, such as being over 65 or disabled, or provide one of a handful of valid “excuses,” such as being out of town for work on election day and follow a long list of rules and procedures. The new measure would allow “no-excuse” voting for all registered voters.

England said the new system would replace in-person absentee voting, but that mail-in absentee ballots would still be accepted.

Voters using the new early system would have to cast their ballots at their circuit clerk’s office, England said, and provide a valid voter ID as they must now do on Election Day.

England said early voting would include a half-day on the Saturday before a primary or election.

Sen. Hob Bryan said having to go to the clerk’s office could be a problem for some people who live a long distance from their county seat and that more places should be made available for the early voting. England said that might be possible in the future if the measure is passed.

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Mississippians could soon purchase liquor and wine seven days a week under a plan that passed the Republican-majority House and is now headed to the Senate for consideration.

The House on March 1 voted 69-31 to pass House Bill 329, which would allow package stores to operate on Sundays from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. State law currently prohibits liquor sales on Sundays.

“They can go get it after church but not before or during church?” Democratic Rep. Ronnie Crudup Jr. of Jackson asked during debate on Friday. 

“That’s correct,” Republican Rep. Brent Powell of Brandon responded. 

Current law only allows package stores to operate from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Monday through Saturday. The House proposal would automatically grant package stores in wet areas the option to sell on Sunday afternoon.

But the House bill allows counties and municipalities to conduct a referendum to opt out of the Sunday sales if 20% of the voters or 1,500 voters, whichever is less, sign onto a petition to conduct an election. 

Democratic Rep. Jeffery Hulum III of Gulfport on Friday said he supported the legislation because it could possibly prevent Mississippians from traveling to other states over the weekend to purchase alcohol and allow state officials to collect more tax revenue. 

The House sent the bill to the Senate for consideration, but Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann’s office has not yet referred the bill to a committee. The Senate committee has until April 2 to advance the bill. 

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Two House committees passed a bill that would establish a committee to study the feasibility of creating an expansive program to provide public funds for students to attend private schools.

House Education Committee Chairman Rob Roberson, who filed the legislation that would initially have created a universal school voucher program, said earlier this session that he just wanted to “start a conversation” on the controversial issue. Several advocacy groups are loudly championing universal voucher expansion this year, while multiple pro-public education groups are strongly opposing it.

Roberson’s original bill was amended in the House Education Committee to not create the program, but instead establish a study committee that would “determine the feasibility of establishing and administering universal education scholarship accounts” and report those findings to the 2025 Legislature. A House Appropriations Committee also passed the amended bill on Tuesday, advancing it to the full House chamber for consideration.

Sources close to House leadership told Mississippi Today on Tuesday that the bill is expected to be recommitted to committee in coming days, which would effectively kill the legislation. That action, however, would require a majority vote of the House chamber.

READ MORE: House Republican leadership files school voucher bills

The study commission would consist of three members appointed by the governor and two each by the speaker and lieutenant governor. Those appointments will include the chairs of the House and Senate Education committees, a local school superintendent, a representative of a private school and a member of the business community.

The Mississippi Constitution states that no public funds can go to a school “not conducted as a free public school.” A case is pending before the Mississippi Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of providing $10 million to private school to deal with COVID-19 issues.

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We can argue from now to next year about whether Mississippi is a football state, a basketball state, a baseball state — or, for that matter, any kind of sports state at all.

What we cannot argue is this: In northeast Mississippi, most often referred to as Hill Country, basketball is king.

Always has been. And, I would wager, always will be.

Let’s take, for example, the recent Mississippi public schools state tournament that concluded over the weekend at the Mississippi Coliseum. Fourteen state champions in seven divisions were crowned. Eight were from up in the state’s northeast corner. The only time Hill Country teams lost was when they played each other.

A quick recounting: In Class 1A, the Blue Mountain girls and the Biggersville boys were winners. In Class 2A – stop me if you’ve heard this before – Ingomar swept both the boys and girls titles. In Class 3A, the Belmont girls and Booneville boys are champions, and the Booneville girls lost by one point to Belmont. In Class 4A, Tishomingo County’s girls easily won the crown, and in Class 7A, Tupelo’s girls won it all.

You will note that nearly all the Hill Country champions are from the MHSAA’s smaller divisions, and there’s a reason. For the most part, northeast Mississippi schools have just said “no” to consolidation. And that has a lot to do with basketball, or more specifically, with the pride the small towns and communities have in their basketball teams.

“Basketball is almost like a religion up there,” says MHSAA executive director Rickey Neaves, and he should know. Neaves played at Saltillo and coached, taught and was an administrator at Booneville. “That’s the way people are raised. It’s in their blood. There are basketball goals in every yard, every park and any place, really, that’s level enough to dribble a ball.”

Neaves knows because it is in his blood, too.

These words are written by a guy from Hattiesburg, nearly at the other end of the state. But they are also written by a guy who learned to read by reading the sports sections of daily newspapers, especially the scoreboard pages with all the scores and statistics in small print. And I can remember picking up the Jackson newspapers back in the 1950s when I was learning to read and being flabbergasted to see high school basketball scores in September and October. Schools from exotic-sounding places such as Jumpertown, Hickory Flat, Ingomar, Potts Camp, Wheeler, New Site, Baldwyn, Blue Mountain and West Union were already playing basketball. And it seemed as if they played every night. The 1956 Ingomar girls won the state championship and finished with a 54-0 record. Fifty-four and zero!

I remember asking my daddy about it, and his saying, “Those schools don’t play football, son. They don’t have enough students for a football team. They play basketball year-round.”

He showed me on a state map where those towns were and he told me this, too: “Those teams know how to play.”

For five decades now, I’ve watched those teams from tiny towns and communities make the three hours-plus drive down to the Big House, and to this day am still amazed at how many folks follow the yellow school buses to support their favorite team. Blue Mountain is a community of about 800, but there appeared at least 2,000 blue-clad fans yelling themselves hoarse at the championship game. 

“We get support from all over Tippah County,” Regina Chills, the Blue Mountain coach, said. “There were people from Ripley and Walnut here cheering for us.”

One strongly suspects there were also Blue Mountain ex-patriots who now live in other parts of Mississippi in attendance as well. Basketball pride and tradition runs deep in Hill Country.

Take Ingomar, which won both the 2A titles. That makes 20 state championships total for Ingomar, 13 for the girls and seven for the boys. This one was particularly special in Ingomar, because Jonathan Ashley, son of Ingomar coaching legend Norris Ashley, won his second as a coach, his first in the Big House. Norris Ashley, whose 1978 team famously won the Overall State Championship (back when there was such a thing), representing the smallest classification. It was Hoosiers in Mississippi.

Norris Ashley, who died just over a year ago, won nine state titles and more than 1,700 games. His son learned from one of the best to ever do it by following his daddy’s teams to the Big House nearly ever year. Norris Ashley was like Hill Country deity. You think this year’s championship wasn’t extra special in Ingomar and in the Ashley family?

Excellent coaching has been the staple of Hill Country basketball. Ashley and others such as brothers Milton and Malcolm Kuykendall, Harvey Childers, Jimmy Guy McDonald, Gerald Caveness, Kermit Davis Sr., and, let us not forget, Baldwyn legend Babe McCarthy easily would have won elections for mayor in their towns. But then, why take a demotion?

The next generation of Hill Country coaches — folks such as Jonathan Ashley and Trent Adair at Ingomar, Cliff Little at Biggersville, and Mike Smith at Booneville — carry on the tradition. 

As Rickey Neaves put it, “Those coaches, in many cases, are the most respected people in their communities. You rarely see them leave. Why would they? The communities support them so well. The gyms are packed. The kids grow up wanting to play. That’s why good coaches gravitate to that area and stay there. Who wouldn’t want to coach basketball where basketball is so important?”

Who, indeed?

MHSAA State Championship results

Class 7A: Boys: Meridian 54, Clinton 50; Girls: Tupelo 47, Germantown 38

Class 6A: Boys: Olive Branch 59, Ridgeland 56; Girls; Neshoba Central 53, Terry 39

Class 5A: Boys: Canton 58, Yazoo City 40; Girls: Laurel 40, Canton 32

Class 4A: Boys: Raymond 53, McComb 28; Girls: Tishomingo County 37, Morton 17

Class 3A: Boys: Booneville 46, Coahoma County 43 (OT); Girls: Belmont 40, Booneville 39

Class 2A: Boys: Ingomar 48, Bogue Chitto 46; Ingomar 57, New Site 40

Class 1A: Boys: Biggersville 45, McAdams 41; Girls: Blue Mountain 38, Lumberton 36

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Mississippi Today’s “Unfettered Power: Mississippi Sheriffs” investigation has been selected as one of six finalists for the coveted 2024 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.

The 2023 investigation from the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today and The New York Times revealed how Mississippi sheriffs rule like kings, wielding vast power, exploiting and abusing the very people they are called to protect with no one stopping them.

The series included new details about the Rankin County “Goon Squad.”

Mississippi Today’s Jerry Mitchell and investigative fellows Ilyssa Daly, Brian Howey and Nate Rosenfield were on the team of journalists who reported the “Unfettered Power” series. It was selected as one of six finalists out of nearly 170 submissions for the annual prize housed at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center.

“This year’s finalists went to extraordinary lengths to uncover the truth – mixing classic shoe-leather journalism with the kind of shrewd and scrappy reporting that inspires new generations to enter the field and seasoned reporters to stick with it,” said Nancy Gibbs, director of the Shorenstein Center. “In a time of great uncertainty, these finalists remind us of journalism’s vital role in our democracy.”

Mississippi Today journalists previously won the 2023 Goldsmith Prize for “The Backchannel” investigation of the state’s welfare scandal and the 2020 Goldsmith Prize for an investigation with The Marshall Project of the state’s restitution centers.

Also this year, Mississippi Today’s “Committed to Jail” in collaboration ProPublica had previously been announced as one of 30 semifinalists for the Goldsmith Prize.

“Strong investigative reporting at the local level is not happening nearly enough, and we take seriously our responsibility to help fill that void in Mississippi,” said Adam Ganucheau, editor-in-chief at Mississippi Today. “We’re proud to be recognized among the very best in the nation, but truly, the impact that these projects and others from our newsroom have had on our home state is what matters most to us.”

Other finalists for the 2024 Goldsmith Prize are The New York Times, STAT, ProPublica, Streetsblog and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The winner will be announced at an April 3 awards ceremony.

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