SPORTS OPINION: Sportsmanship at JCM-Milan was as refreshing as cooler temperatures

Friday night was a great night for football, and where I went this week had to be one of the best places to go in the entire state.

The oven that God put on 425 degrees apparently finally finished whatever He was baking, so the heat dome finally broke and gave way to football season-type temperatures.

Warm enough for the more girthy among us like myself to feel comfortable in t-shirt and shorts but not feeling like we needed to bring a couple of liters of water with us to make it through four quarters of following the action up and down the field.

This week was my first time to actually cover a game at Hub City Central where Jackson Central-Merry began playing its home games 52 weeks ago this week at last year’s homecoming, and it’s a nice setting for a football game.

Their game was against Milan, and I pick football games on Friday mornings on WTKB-FM 93.7 The Victory with Steve Hemann and Milan Mirror-Exchange Editor Vic Parkins as I have every season since 2014 (including when I wasn’t covering sports and even that one football season I wasn’t even in journalism), and while I was up there, I heard about how some people in Milan probably wouldn’t go to the game because of safety concerns.

I totally understand how people who might not live here or get out much might be concerned about safety in Jackson because of the number of reports of violent crime in the area.

And we even had a safety concern at a game earlier in the season that wound up not being anything in the stadium, but was understandable by everyone who was there.

But I can tell you that Madison County Sheriff’s Office and Jackson Police ensure high school football games are as safe as they can be outside of putting barbed wire fences and snipers over every single sporting event in the city.

Our local law enforcement entities work hard to ensure safety in environments like that, and if any bad actors were to get through the safeguards at the gates, they would be dealt with swiftly if they attempted to act badly.

The actual game between Milan and JCM was the bes game I’ve covered all year as JCM came from behind to take the lead before Milan took the lead back with a couple of minutes left and JCM threatened in the end but fell short.

But here are a couple of other things that were nice about the game.

In the fourth quarter, one of JCM’s players got hut with an apparent leg injury, and he was laying on the turf in front of Milan’s sideline.

In a game as close as this one was and as important as this one is in the Region 7-2A race, you’d expect a lot of tense moments between the teams after each play is complete.

But when the athletic trainers from Sports Plus got over and tried to help the injured Cougar limp the 53-and-a-third yards that is the width of a football field back to the JCM sideline and was having trouble doing so, one Milan player - Kellan Hall who would later catch the game-winning pass - got under the other shoulder of the JCM player to help him off before a JCM teammate came over to take Hall’s spot.

The JCM public address announcer even recognized the sportsmanship from Hall.

And then after the game while I was interviewing JCM head coach Erit Turner, I felt bad about interviewing him in that moment because I looked at midfield and saw both teams and both coaching staffs gathered in a massive prayer huddle.

I paused the interview and told him to get to the huddle (which was too late because I think whoever was leading the prayer said Amen before Turner got there, my bad) and then come talk to me after he talked with the team.

But sometimes we can forget or not expect sportsmanship to be prominent in a big game like JCM and Milan played.

It’s good to see that Milan head coach Wade Comer and Turner have continued to ensure sportsmanship will be consistently obvious from both of their programs.

Brandon Shields is the managing editor of The Jackson Post. Reach him through e-mail at jksnpost@gmail.com. Follow him on X.com @JSEditorBrandon. Follow him on Instagram @EditorBrandon.