Mississippi High School Activities Association


The Mississippi High School Activities Association is the official sanctioning body of all public and some private junior high and high school academic and athletic competitions in the state of Mississippi. It is a non-profit organization and is headquartered in Clinton, Mississippi. The MHSAA is a member of the National Federation of State High School Associations.

Responsibilities

The activities which the MHSAA oversees include chess, esports, debate, drama, speech, writing-prose, poetry, short stories, essays and music, both band and choral.
The athletic competitions of which the MHSAA oversees include archery, football, swimming, slowpitch softball, volleyball, cross country, soccer, basketball, powerlifting, tennis, golf, track, baseball and fastpitch softball.
The MHSAA state football championship games are contested in early December. The site alternates between Vaught–Hemingway Stadium in Oxford, Davis Wade Stadium in Starkville and M.M. Roberts Stadium in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Classification

The MHSAA is currently divided into six classes. Enrollment is usually based on numbers from the Mississippi Department of Education. These numbers are considered official for classification purposes over a two-year period. For example, enrollment numbers submitted in 2016 would be used for the 2017-18 and 2018-19 school years.. The largest 32 schools in the enrollment list are usually represented as Class 6A, the next 32 largest is considered Class 5A. Classes 4A, 3A and 2A are divided evenly in terms of number of schools. The remaining schools, usually those that have a student enrollment of 200 or less, would be Class 1A.