Best of MSPreps delivers 'Christmas bonus' to MSHOF

Posted on: December 18,2015

Clarion-Ledger publisher Nathan Edwards, right, presents a check to Bill Blackwell, Chief Operations Officer of the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and Museum. (Photo by Elwin Williams)

Christmas came slightly early for your Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and Museum when Nathan Edwards, publisher of The Clarion-Ledger, delivered a generous check from the newspaper’s first Best of MSPreps program.
Last May, The Clarion-Ledger hosted a banquet to honor the state’s best athletes in every sport sanctioned by the Mississippi High School Activities Association and the Mississippi Association of Independent Schools. More 2,500 attended the banquet at the Jackson Convention Center. Drew Brees was the featured speaker at the largest dinner service in the history of the convention center.
The event was hugely successful and built on the Pop Stars program the MSHOF had sponsored for 13 years and which also celebrated the best of Mississippi high school sports.
“We’re overwhelmed at the attendance, excitement and energy in the room,” then Clarion-Ledger publisher Jason Taylor said last May. “Some of the stories are so powerful. I think it is really inspiring because sometimes Mississippi is treated as an underdog, but tonight we’re celebrating champions.”
Edwards, named publisher of the CL in September, is determined to grow the event in 2016 and future years. The 2016 Best of MSPreps banquet is scheduled for May 19.
“Everything about the Best of MSPreps banquet was first class,” said Bill Blackwell, chief operations officer of the MSHOF. “It was great for Mississippi sports and obviously we’re happy to be the beneficiary here at the place where Mississippi sports legends live forever.”
Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi, which has sponsored PopStars in the past, was a major sponsor of the first Best of MSPreps, along with Mississippi Sports Medicine and Orthopaedic Center, Baptist Health Systems and Entergy, all of which have lended support to the MSHoF in the past.