The 76th annual Choctaw Indian Fair was hosted in Choctaw, Mississippi last weekend, and one of the main events of the fair was the Stickball tournament.
The Gulf States Newsroom’s Joseph King went to a few games to report on one of the oldest sports in the nation.
The following transcript has been edited for clarity.
KING, BYLINE:
Stickball is considered one of the oldest sports in North America, and every July, the Choctaw Indian Fair hosts the “World Series of Stickball”.
The fair started in 1949, and the tournament was an important event in its celebration of Choctaw culture.
If you need help visualizing this fast and physical game, imagine a more aggressive version of Lacrosse — 60 players spread out across a football field, all with the goal to use their handcrafted hickory sticks to gather a small ball and hit the opposing side's pole. The team with the most points after four quarters wins.
The game originated as a way to settle disputes amongst tribes here in the Southeast. Today, Choctaw tribes from across the country field more than 50 teams across five divisions to play in a tournament for bragging rights and to preserve Choctaw culture.
Hours before one of the championship matches on Friday, Kirk Mcmillan was under a tree sanding down a stickball stick.
KING: How long have you been making stickball sticks?
MCMILLAN: Roughly 30 years. I started when I was around 16. When I first started, I was looking for stickball sticks since I'm left-handed. Not a lot of people made left-hand sticks back then.
KING: Mcmillan says he had a hard time trying to find someone to teach him how to make the sticks. These techniques are usually handed down within families, and his family history was in sharecropping rather than craft-making.
MCMILLAN: A majority of their cultural ways as far as social dancing and things that we do now, I'm more of the first generation from my grandparents' side of the family.
KING: Later that night, Mcmillan’s team, Oka Homa, went head-to-head with Tvskahomma in the 35 and older division championship game.
For 60 minutes, the group of players duked it out, battling through injuries and the humid Mississippi heat. All of them had on jerseys — like any other sport — but some opted to play barefoot, while others wore cultural attire with their athletic uniforms. In the end, Oka Homa came out on top.
Oka Homa’s most valuable player, Michael Lyons, called the win “a dream come true.”
LYONS: I always wanted to be MVP for my community… It took 30 years to make it to this opportunity.
KING: What does it mean to you to preserve your culture in stickball?
LYONS: A lot of emotions. Love for the culture. And I’m proud to be Choctaw.
KING: After the game, Tribal Chief Cyrus Ben handed the team their reward, a big drum.
BEN: As you can hear behind me, as the team's coming out into this field, the drum is the heartbeat of our people.
KING: Ben takes pride in seeing traditions live on through the young and the old. When asked how much it cost to put the Choctaw Indian Fair together, he says it's priceless.
BEN: Many centuries ago, the government tried to remove us from this land. Our ancestors stood strong; they handed down these traditions to us, and we’re going to carry these traditions here in East-Central Mississippi. Okli Mayommoma — we’re still here.
KING: For the Gulf States Newsroom, I’m Joseph King.
This story was produced by the Gulf States Newsroom, a collaboration between Mississippi Public Broadcasting, WBHM in Alabama, WWNO and WRKF in Louisiana and NPR.
