Jackson Free Press

The air is thick with humidity, and beyond the buzz of cicadas and crickets, the July night is quiet except for the intermittent sound of Pearl River players idly conversing and fairground jubilation in the far distance. The team coaches are much more serious, walking up and down the line of players and trying to keep them in rank.

Some players stretch, while some laugh and joke. Most of them wear serious expressions and glance furtively at the stickball field on the hill. Their drummer begins pounding his drum instinctively as he leads the stickball players up to the arena.

While fireworks explode behind the audience, the Beaver Dam team players clack their sticks, or kaboccas, above their heads and let out hoots and hollers of intimidation as they walk on the field to take on Pearl River.

Before the game starts, the team members walk by each other and smack kabocca like high-fives to demonstrate sportsmanship. Their actions say "good luck," but it's obvious both sets of players want to win tonight.

An announcer offers a brief prayer in native Choctaw, although the words "Jesus Christ" are distinguishable near the end. Each team clacks their kabocca softly as if in approval before they separate to either side of the field. The game is about to begin.

When the Choctaw Indian Fair began in 1949, stickball was an exhibition instead of a real game. Crafts and weapon-making were seen as anthropologically salient, but interest in the Choctaw came from mostly within.

Today, people from all over come to the fair in Neshoba County. The fair takes place on the reservation, home of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. The tribe arranges concerts that occur nearly every night, and young ladies compete for the coveted title of Choctaw princess.

Starting the Wednesday before, July 8, eight men's stickball teams from around Mississippi began competing in a bracket. On the night of the fair, players waiting around the Choctaw High School football field are obviously ready for the championship to begin.

The rules of stickball are simple: Players can't touch the ball (originally a leather-woven ball called a "towa") with their hands, but use two sticks with netted ends to grasp the small ball. Even for the most skilled of players, catching a ball mid-flight is difficult.

Using the regulation handmade sticks (the Choctaw word is "kabocca") requires dexterity, speed and agility, and keeping your eye on the ball as it bounces, flies and haphazardly makes it way around different corners of the field is a challenge even for the crowd.

Players are allowed to tackle one another, but body slams and tackles from the waist down are not allowed.

"Everything else you can do," says Pearl River coach Jimmy Vaughn, chuckling.

Players commonly drop their kabocca when they see an opposing team member get the ball in an attempt to dive at them and take them. Sacrificing self for the team is a fact of stickball.

The rules are the same for all divisions, men and women alike. With such lax rules concerning physical safety, it's a wonder more people aren't injured, especially considering the only protective gear the players wear is a mouthpiece.

Each team has about 80 players although only 30 play on the field at a time.

The three main positions in stickball are offense, center and defense. A team's offense waits around the other team's goal, and the defense stays near its own goal.

In stickball, goals are 12-foot-tall beams. Defenders surround the white beams, and opposite team's forward players surround the defenders. Players score by either throwing the ball and striking the goal, or touching the goal with the kabocca and ball.

The game is divided into four quarters of 15 minutes, and when Saturday's game finally begins, the veritable battlefield takes life.

Beaver Dam racks up three points in the first two quarters, and even though Pearl River gives a dogged rally in the third quarter, Beaver Dam holds them off to win the 2009 World Series of Stickball Championship 3-2.

More native to Mississippi than any other people, the Choctaws know how to make and play a real competition, and a fun fair as well.

The Choctaw Indian Fair is an event unique to their tribe and ancestry, and stickball lies at the heart of it.