The Littles will have a big time Saturday in Biggersville

by Rick Cleveland, Mississippi Today
February 28, 2025

To borrow from the Southeastern Conference: Basketball just means more in extreme northeast Mississippi, more commonly known as Hill Country. Never was that more evident than Friday morning at Mississippi Coliseum. In a battle of tiny town titans, the Biggersville girls came from behind to defeat Thrasher 54-47 for the Class 1A state championship in a fiercely contested, well-coached and well-played game.

When the final horn sounded, the basketball court became a sea of emotion, tears flowing seemingly everywhere: tears of joy, tears of despair. As much as the outcome meant – one way or the other to so many folks – it just had to mean more to one family. They would be the Littles of Biggersville.

Cliff Little is the Biggersville head coach. Jana Little, his wife, is an assistant coach. Lainey Jackson Little, their daughter, is a junior guard on the team. Eighteen years ago Cliff and Jana were a young married couple teaching at East Webster in Maben. Cliff was an assistant basketball coach, Jana the team’s scorekeeper. The team qualified for the State Tournament in Jackson, but Jana, six months pregnant, was diagnosed with toxemia (pregnancy-induced hypertension) and stayed home.

On March 1, 2007, Jana gave birth to a daughter, who weighed one pound, 15 ounces. “She would have fit in the palm of my hand,” Cliff Little says. 

They named her Lainey Jackson, the middle name from the name of the place they had planned to be the night Lainey Jack, as they call her, was born. The initial prognosis was grim: She might make it, she might not. Lainey Jack spent the first six weeks of her life in the hospital, mostly in an incubator. The tiny girl showed then what the folks in Biggersville have come to know – that she was a fighter.

Let’s move ahead 17 years to this time last year. The Biggersville girls with Lainey Jack as their second leading scorer and playmaker made it to the State championship semifinals against Lumberton, only to lose by a single point on two late free throws.

Cliff Little also coaches the Biggersville boys, who went on to win the 2024 state championship. So he wasn’t back in Biggersville the day after his girls were eliminated. He wasn’t in the Biggersville gym when his girls took the floor for their first practice in preparation for what occurred Friday morning at Mississippi Coliseum.. The family have rarely missed a day together since.

They certainly didn’t miss on the eighth day of May last year when, during a players-only practice, Lainey Jack went down with a horrible injury to her right knee. A torn ACL that required surgery and months and months of strenuous rehab.

How strenuous? When his daughter first began her rehab at home, Cliff would make sure a garbage can was nearby for when she would need to vomit, which was all too often. But she was determined and kept at it, day after day. We may assume that when you come into this world weighing 31 ounces, such grit comes naturally.

Said Cliff Little, “I told her back during all that rehab that when we won the state championship I was going to have the date – May 8th – inscribed on her ring.”

Lainey Jack was released to play again in December, just seven months after surgery. She is still working to recover the quickness and cutting ability she possessed prior to the injury, but it’s coming.

She was in the starting lineup Friday, a heavy brace on that right knee.. One minute into the game, she swished a 22-foot three-pointer to give Biggersville its first lead. That would be her only basket, but she scrapped and battled throughout. And, afterward, she was in the middle of the celebration, holding the cherished Gold Ball trophy.

“I worked really hard to come back, and that’s what makes this so special,” she said, before deflecting praise to her teammates, 15-year-old Sadiya Hill in particular. Hill scored 24 points to lead the Lions, while Jaylee Stafford scored 19 and pulled down 11 rebounds despite playing much of the fourth quarter with four fouls.

Stafford and Little are juniors. The gifted Hill is just a sophomore and her talented older sister, K’yana Hill is another junior. So there’s a good chance Biggersville will be back again next year. No telling how many championships the 46-year-old Cliff Little will win before he’s done. This makes seven state championships – five boys, two girls – in all for Little.

“They are all special,” Little said when asked where this latest championship ranks. “They’re all special, but this one, considering the circumstances… this one’s extra special.”

Put it this way: There will be an 18th birthday party, combined with a state championship celebration, in Biggersville Saturday.  

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mobile food banks close in Mississippi amid rising hunger

by Simeon Gates, Mississippi Today
February 28, 2025

Mid-South Food Bank has shuttered 12 of its mobile food banks in Mississippi as well as dozens of others in Arkansas and Tennessee with the ending of federal COVID-19 rescue funding.

Under the America Rescue Fund Act, the Department of Human Services, Office of Economic Opportunity, awarded $4.3 million to food banks across the country. Mid-South Food Bank added more sites to its mobile food program to reach more people during the COVID lockdowns in 2020. 

Interim President and CEO Scott Fortin explained that the cuts are part of the nonprofit’s efforts to spend their donations and funding better. He said some of these sites were redundant as there were brick-and-mortar locations close by. 

“We are doing our best to continue to distribute food through the programs that we’ve always had, and while looking at those programs we expanded during COVID to see how they can continue to run but more efficiently” he said.

In all, 49 mobile sites were closed. The food bank’s website has a schedule of all the current mobile pantry locations and times. 

The Mid-South Food Bank distributes over 2.5 million meals annually to parts of Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi  with 186,550 of them in Mississippi. 

Memphis-based Mid-South Food Bank serves 440,000 meals a year. It saw a huge spike in demand during the pandemic. Fortin said that has since decreased. But in general, food banks across the country are reporting increased demand, according to a 2023 survey by Feeding America.

Food insecurity went up after the COVID pandemic, according to a 2023 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the latest available. The U.S. House resolution budget bill passed this week and endorsed by President Trump includes $230 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program (SNAP). If it passes, food banks could be impacted even more.

While nationally one in 10 Americans are food insecure, in Mississippi the number is one in four and the state has the highest rate of food insecurity in the country, according to Uproot Mississippi.

Executive director Martha Allen Price of Hattiesburg-based Extra Table, which receives no federal funding, said she’s seen an increase in demand for food since the pandemic, especially with rising grocery prices. She noted that “13.4% of Mississippians are working and still not making a living wage, and so they’re using the food pantry as an emergency source of food.” 

Extra Table partners with food pantries to fundraise on their behalf for healthy and shelf-stable foods. Their funding comes entirely through private donations. They work with food pantries in 51 Mississippi counties.

“We provided 1.3 million pounds of food last year to our food pantry and soup kitchen partners,” Megan Burkes with Extra Table said.

Individuals can donate and volunteer directly to Mid-South Food Bank and Extra Table. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Prenatal care for poor women may be a casualty of political infighting

by Sophia Paffenroth, Mississippi Today
February 28, 2025

A lawmaker playing hardball may cost poor pregnant women a policy that would help them receive timely prenatal care – after the program’s implementation was already delayed a year because of administrative hiccups. 

Senate Medicaid Chairman Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven, told Mississippi Today he will not be taking up a House bill to fix the issues in the program. He called it “his prerogative as chairman” – despite authoring his own bill last year on the policy and purportedly being a strong proponent.

House Medicaid Chair Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg, the author of last year’s bill on presumptive eligibility for pregnant women that passed into law, re-worked the bill this year to match federal guidelines so the program can take effect. It passed the House unanimously Jan. 24 and was transferred to the Senate. 

But now, it may die in the Senate due to political bartering. 

Blackwell added the policy to the Medicaid tech bill, legislation that comes up nearly every year to make technical amendments and updates to laws governing the Division of Medicaid. But Blackwell’s bill contains dozens of items – including special interest items such as mandating that the agency cover a new, $16,000 postpartum depression drug and a sleep apnea device. 

Sage Therapeutics, the Massachusetts-based company that makes the postpartum depression drug, has hired the local lobbying firm the Clearwater Group this year. 

“I don’t believe it’s the best idea (that) something so critical (as pregnancy presumptive eligibility) should be attached to a $7 million laundry list of unrelated lobbyist requests, particularly as our federal government has stated its intent to trim such unnecessary spending,” McGee told Mississippi Today. “The House will continue fighting for the people who don’t have a hired lobbying effort.”

Medical experts say early prenatal care is essential to mitigating bad health outcomes like preterm birth, for which Mississippi leads the nation. 

Should Blackwell’s 186-page technical amendment bill pass, it would cost the Division of Medicaid $6.8 million. In contrast, it was estimated last year that presumptive eligibility would cost just under $600,000. Lawmakers appropriated that amount to the agency last year.

Although Blackwell’s bill passed the full Senate on Feb. 12, another lawmaker also had questions about the costs associated with the bill. 

“It looks to me like we’re covering a lot more than we have in the past, and I think – don’t we have like a $25 million Medicaid deficit?” Sen. Angela Hill, R-Picayune, asked on the floor. 

Blackwell confirmed that the agency is facing a deficit next year.

Blackwell’s bill is now in the hands of the House Medicaid committee, which McGee chairs. 

McGee’s bill – which strictly fixes the issues with pregnancy presumptive eligibility and would allow the Division of Medicaid to continue training providers and allow pregnant women to take advantage of the program – will die if not passed out of Blackwell’s committee by the deadline Tuesday, March 4.

The policy, called Presumptive Eligibility for Pregnant Women, would allow low-income women who became newly-eligible for Medicaid once pregnant to receive immediate prenatal care as soon as they find out they’re pregnant – even if their Medicaid application is still pending. The policy is especially effective in non-expanded states, where the majority of low-income women aren’t eligible for Medicaid until they become pregnant – meaning a lengthy application process can cut well into their pregnancy.

Mississippi is currently one of only three states with neither expansion or presumptive eligibility for pregnant women. 

Family Health Center in Laurel was one of the first clinics to sign up for the program when it was rolled out by the Division of Medicaid last year. Dr. Rashad Ali, an OB and the CEO of the clinic who has made it his mission to serve uninsured and underinsured women, was disappointed to hear that the policy needed to go through the Legislature once again to be amended. 

Now, he worries what will happen if the policy never goes into effect. 

“I think they’re missing out on great opportunities to enhance the wellbeing of pregnant moms in the state of Mississippi,” said Ali. “… We are one of the leading states in terms of maternal mortality. This is one of the things that can help bring us out of the top.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.