Two schools in Marshall County are working to address the situation after a postgame altercation following a rivalry basketball game.
On Tuesday after a varsity boys’ basketball game against Guntersville and Albertville, an altercation broke out between athletes and spectators following Guntersville’s 60-50 win.
A joint statement from Albertville City Schools and Guntersville City Schools, obtained by the Advertiser-Gleam, read that both school systems are working together in a plan moving forward.
“After last night’s Albertville-Guntersville basketball game, an altercation occurred involving players and adults,” the statement read. “Both schools are working together to address the situation and remain committed to sportsmanship, teamwork and mutual respect.”
Guntersville is set to host Grissom on Thursday. Albertville will play in the Class 7A, Area 8 tournament next week.
Dr. Pepper released its Creamy Coconut flavor in May 2024. The flavor combined the original 23 Dr Pepper flavors with layers of tropical coconut flavor and a delicious, creamy finish.
“The coconut flavor is reminiscent of a virgin piña colada versus rather than straight-up coconut. Dr Pepper Creamy Coconut Zero Sugar has a little more of an artificial coconut bite than its full-sugar counterpart but still supplies the fruity flavor.”
After 12 weeks of high school basketball, AHSAA postseason area tournament action can begin today with AISA schools starting next week.
AHSAA Class 1A-6A area tournaments must be completed by Wednesday while Class 7A teams play area tournaments Feb. 5-8. The top seed, determined during regular season play, hosts area tournaments.
Of Auburn football’s many problems in 2024, one glaring issue was kicking.
The Tigers made just 12 of 22 attempted field goals last season, with Towns McGough — Auburn’s starter to begin the season — making just 5 of his 12 attempts. He unexpectedly took the starting role when the season began due to Alex McPherson missing time with a gastrointestinal illness.
McPherson was almost automatic in his previous two seasons with Auburn, making 14 of 15 field goals in the 2022 and 2023 seasons. He only appeared in one game in 2024, though, due to the illness.
Former Birmingham Southern transfer Ian Vachon took over kicking duties for the final three games of the season, going 6-for-8, including a game-tying field goal at the end of regulation against Texas A&M, sending the game to overtime where Auburn eventually won.
Hugh Freeze said at Senior Bowl practice Wednesday that both McGough and Vachon will be back in 2025, and he’s “prayerful and hopeful” that McPherson will also return. Freeze said McPherson underwent surgery, a decision that Freeze said the doctors felt like was “the best option.”
“There’s no question he’s feeling better,” Freeze said.
Auburn also added former Southern Miss kicker Connor Gibbs out of the transfer portal. Gibbs went 10-for-13 on field goals in 2024, including a long of 59. Despite his addition to the room, Freeze said there will be competition for the starting spot.
“Hopefully we’ll have healthy bodies that’ll battle it out and see,” Freeze said.
Auburn will have a completely new look at punter in 2025, after the departures of both Oscar Chapman and backup punter Gabe Russo.
The Tigers signed former Oklahoma State punter Hudson Kaak out of the transfer portal, along with freshman punter John Alan McGuire. Freeze was optimistic about McGuire, but mentioned the difficulty of replacing Chapman’s consistency and production.
“John McGuire is a very talented kid also, so, I think we’re gonna be solid again,” Freeze said, “But Oscar was really good, and so we’ll see what happens there.”
Kaak, the most likely immediate starter, spent two seasons in Stillwater, averaging 41.2 yards per punt over the course of his Oklahoma State career. His longest career punt is 54 yards and has had 31 downed inside the 20-yard line.
McGuire played high school football at in-state powerhouse Thompson High School, where he handled both punting and kicking duties. He is the fifth-ranked punter in the country for the 2025 class, according to Kohl’s Kicking Camps, a recruiting service that specializes in rating punters, kickers and long snappers.
The Rev. Jennifer Sanders, a pioneering lesbian pastor in Birmingham who once officiated the same-sex wedding for a former Miss America, has retired from her job as pastor.
Sanders was elected pastor of the 120-member Beloved Community Church in Avondale in 2016. She led her final service as pastor on Jan. 26.
Beloved, founded in 2000, is affiliated with the United Church of Christ, one of the more liberal mainline denominations.
“It was a beautiful wedding,” Sanders said at the time. “They are a wonderful, happy couple. It was a joy to perform the ceremony.”
Sanders declined to discuss her retirement. “I’m trying to just quietly fade away,” she said in an email. But added, “You’ll still see me around in activist and other circles.”
That includes her mission of “fighting dehumanization and exploitation in all their forms,” she said.
Sanders has a bachelor’s degree in history and political science from Rice University and graduated from UAB in 1998 with a master’s degree in occupational therapy. She worked for more than 15 years as an occupational therapist at nursing homes and hospitals in Birmingham.
Beloved Community Church, which is at 131 41st Street South next to the Avondale Brewery, holds services on Sundays at 6 p.m.
Beloved will be led by a team of co-pastors and a lay transition team, while looking for the next pastor, Sanders said.
Tax season is officially underway and the Internal Revenue Service expects more than 140 million returns to be filed ahead of the filing deadline on April 15.
The IRS began processing tax returns Monday. For filers who submit their returns electronically using direct deposit, refunds are generally issued in less than 21 days. There is a caution from the tax agency, however, that urges “taxpayers not to rely on receiving refund by a certain date, especially when making major purchases or paying bills.
“Some returns may require additional review and may take longer,” the IRS added.
Some credits also prompt longer waits for refunds. Under the federal Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes, or PATH, Act, the IRS cannot issue Earned Income Tax Credit or Additional Child Tax Credit refunds before mid-February due to extra identity checks with those credits. The IRS expects EITC/ACTC-related refunds to be available in bank accounts or on debit cards by March 3, assuming there are no other issues with their tax return.
You can use the IRS “Where’s My Refund” tool to track your refund. To check, you will need your Social Security number or individual taxpayer ID number, your filing status and exact refund amount on your return.
The information on “Where’s My Refund?” is updated once a day, overnight so there’s no need to check more than once a day.
NIL has changed college sports dramatically, but how does it really work? Eli Gold returns to the show with his new boss Jacksonville State athletic director Greg Seitz to discuss the inner workings of a Division I athletic department in the age of NIL.
Beat Everyone is available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on your favorite platform to automatically receive new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Beat Everyone is brought to you by Broadway Joe’s Fantasy Sports.
The Reese’s Senior Bowl annually brings players from schools all over the country to Mobile for a week of practices, meetings and evaluations, culminating in Saturday’s all-star game at Hancock Whitney Stadium.
But just nearly every major college football program is represented in the Senior Bowl, so are most of the states in the U.S., as well as a handful of foreign countries. This year’s game features players who finished high school in 35 different states, plus the District of Columbia, Canada and Australia.
But which state produced the most this year? Not surprisingly it’s Florida, which features some of the best high school football in the country.
There are 17 Floridians in this year’s Senior Bowl, a group that includes the likes running back Brashard Smith of SMU, wide receivers Arian Smith of Georgia and Xavier Restrepo of Miami, tight end Mason Taylor of LSU, defensive linemen Tim Smith of Alabama and Walter Nolen of Ole Miss and cornerbacks Mac McWilliams of UCF and Azareye’h Thomas of Florida State. (For our purposes here, being “from” a state means a player finished high school there, even though many were born in a different state or might have even begun their football careers elsewhere).
Next up are Texas (12), Georgia (10) and Louisiana (9), numbers that again mirror the caliber of high school football in those states. Alabama and Michigan are tied with six, ahead of California, Maryland, New Jersey, Utah and Virginia with five (the full list of states represented in this year’s Senior Bowl is at the bottom of this story).
The Alabamians at the Senior Bowl represent six different high schools and six different colleges: Florida linebacker Shemar James (Faith Academy), Oregon wide receiver Tez Johnson (Pinson Valley), Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard (Fairhope), South Alabama wide receiver Jamaal Pritchett (Jackson), Tulane safety Caleb Ransaw (Sparkman) and Jacksonville State offensive lineman Clay Webb (Oxford). Johnson and Ransaw both began their college careers at Troy.
In fact, James alone of the Alabamians never transferred during his college career, spending all three years at Florida. Leonard transferred from Duke, while Pritchett began his career at Tuskegee and Webb at Georgia.
Alabamians in the 2025 Reese’s Senior Bowl
Player
Pos.
College
High School
Shemar James
LB
Florida
Faith Academy
Tez Johnson
WR
Oregon
Pinson Valley
Riley Leonard
QB
Notre Dame
Fairhope
Jamaal Pritchett
WR
South Alabama
Jackson
Caleb Ransaw
SAF
Tulane
Sparkman
Clay Webb
OL
Jacksonville State
Oxford
As previously noted, there are two Australians in this year’s Senior Bowl, both punters. Alabama’s James Burnip and Florida’s Jeremy Crawshaw join a long list of alum of the Pro Kick Australia program who have succeeded in American college football before going on to NFL opportunities (the Chicago Bears’ Tory Taylor, the San Francisco 49ers’ Mitch Wishnowsky and the Seattle Seahawks’ Michael Dickson are among those Australian Senior Bowl alums now punting in the league).
The Canadian is quarterback Taylor Elgersma, a native of London, Ontario. There have been many Canadians in the Senior Bowl in the past (including quarterbacks Mark Rypien and Jesse Palmer), but Elgersma is unusual in that he also played at a Canadian college — Wilfred Laurier, which in 2024 he led to the Vanier Cup as Canada’s “U Sports” national champion.
Kickoff for the 2025 Reese’s Senior Bowl is set for 1:30 p.m. Saturday at Hancock Whitney Stadium in Mobile, with television coverage on NFL Network. A limited number of tickets remain for the game and can be purchased at seniorbowl.com/tickets.
Below is the full list of states and countries represented in this year’s Senior Bowl:
After shutting down in 2020, Cloudmont Ski Resort in Mentone got new life and plenty of visitors this past month thanks to a group of volunteers eager to see Alabama’s only ski slope snow-covered and open for business once again.
Cindy Jones, whose husband Gary has owned and operated the ski slope with his family since the ’70s, said they made the decision to close Cloudmont Ski Resort on Lookout Mountain in 2020 due to a decline in her husband’s health as well as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Jones, who works a full-time office job in Chattanooga, Tenn., didn’t have plans to re-open the ski slope again anytime soon. That is until she received a surprise call on Jan. 3 from Evan Thibaud, who offered to assemble a crew of volunteers to help bring Cloudmont back to life.
“He called me at work and talked to me for like an hour,” said Jones, “saying ‘you got to open this thing. It’s going to be cold weather. Winter is going to be a really cold January. You got to do this thing. I’ve got all these people. We can help,’ and they did. This variety of just good people who love the outdoors and love the sport.
One guy had his own landscaping business and came out to cut the briars away from under the lift, and another guy had a tree service and checked the lights on the poles for night skiing. Another guy knew we needed a compressor for snowmaking and so he helped rent one. I’m just trusting all these people and taking a leap of faith that all of it was going to come together and work.”
Thibaud, motivated by memories of spending time as a kid skiing at Cloudmont with a friend who has since passed away, said a group of more than 25 volunteers — some from right next door while others were from as far as Mississippi and South Alabama — responded to social media posts asking for help. They spent a week at Cloudmont doing everything they could to prepare the slope in hopes that, with a little luck, it could reopen and on Jan. 11, the slope did just that.
“That’s really one of those situations that could never be imagined,” said Thibaud. “You know, I can barely get people to organize and set up something for a weekend, but people really showed up and got it running in a week, out of nowhere. I’m getting a lot of credit for this, but it was everyone that got it open.”
Throughout this past month, the ski slope has been open most nights and several weekends, offering hundreds of locals and visitors from surrounding communities and beyond — including returning customers from decades past now bringing their families for the first time — to enjoy the ski hill. For Jones, meeting everyone and seeing the hill back in action has been an unexpected reminder of what Cloudmont means to so many, even after so many years.
Skier at Cloudmont Ski Resort in 2010. (The Birmingham News , Hal Yeager)(The Birmingham News , Hal Yeager)
“And I tell you what, the number of people that said ‘thank you for opening,’ it’s great,” said Jones. “It was just phenomenal. People would say, ‘I was here in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, you know, whenever. They brought their children, and even their grandchildren, out to ski, and some people we’ve seen multiple times, you know, while we’ve been open. It’s been a wonderful experience just to have people so excited that we’ve opened again.”
And while last night was likely Cloudmont’s last, at least unless another cold front comes through, the new memories for visitors lucky enough to spend some time on the hill there this season will be enough to hold its loyal customers, as well as the volunteers who worked so hard to make it all happen, over until then.
Cloudmont Ski Resort on Lookout Mountain in Mentone, Ala., re-opened on Jan. 11 after being closed since 2020. (Evan Thibaud)(Evan Thibaud)
“It was a crash course on running a ski resort,” said Thibaud. “I look at the place totally different now. I used to be a kid going there, and now I’m seeing it in a whole new light. And it’s a wonderful experience being an adult and seeing it with this new life. It’s like everyone goes there with a ‘let’s try’ attitude, and that’s contagious, from the parking lot to the end of the night.”
“It’s just a little ski hill in Alabama,” Jones said, reflecting on what makes Cloudmont so special to so many. “You know where people show up in whatever, whether it be your fatigues, your jeans, your fancy ski wear. It doesn’t matter, and everybody just has fun.”
The Pro Bowl Games start on Thursday, then conclude on Sunday, and the all-star players have their assignments for 10 skills competitions and the flag-football game.
Ten players from Alabama high schools and colleges are scheduled to participate in the Pro Bowl Games. Their assignments include:
Detroit Lions strong safety Brian Branch (Alabama): Relay Race, flag football
Houston Texans wide receiver Nico Collins (Clay-Chalkville): Passing the Test, flag football
Pittsburgh Steelers free safety Minkah Fitzpatrick (Alabama): Relay Race, flag football
Detroit Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs (Alabama): Relay Race, flag football
Baltimore Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey (Hoover, Alabama): Helmet Harmony, Punt Perfect, flag football
Green Bay Packers running back Josh Jacobs (Alabama): Passing the Test, flag football
Cleveland Browns wide receiver Jerry Jeudy (Alabama): Relay Race, flag football
Green Bay Packers free safety Xavier McKinney (Alabama): Helmet Harmony, flag football
Denver Broncos cornerback Patrick Surtain II (Alabama): Relay Race, flag football
New York Jets defensive tackle Quinnen Williams (Wenonah, Alabama): The Big Spike, Tug-of-War
Two other players with Alabama football roots were chosen for the Pro Bowl Games but are not participating – Philadelphia Eagles guard Landon Dickerson (Alabama) and Baltimore Ravens running back Derrick Henry (Alabama).
The Pro Bowl Games will be televised from 6 to 7:30 p.m. CST Thursday by ESPN from Nicholson Fieldhouse at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
The winning conference in each of the skills events receives three points, except dodgeball, which is worth six points. The score at the end of the skills events will be the starting score for the flag-football game.
In Thursday’s events, the AFC and the NFC will square off in:
Passing The Test: Quarterbacks try to hit targets at various distances around the field worth different point values in 40 seconds. Before the challenge, each quarterback will select a Pro Bowl Games teammate to answer five trivia questions about current Pro Bowl players. For every correct answer, the quarterback gets an additional 10 seconds. The winner of the competition is the team with the quarterback who scores the most points.
Satisfying Catches: One wide receiver, tight end and defensive back from each conference will compete in an obstacle course, including catches from a Jugs machine at three distances. Each teammate will complete the course back-to-back with the lowest combined time winning the challenge.
The Big Spike: Three big men from each conference step up to the Spike-o-Meter and have three attempts to score the highest number on their spike. The player with the highest score, measured by power and impact, will win.
Relay Race: A simultaneous event where four players from each conference complete a 40-yard dash before handing a football to the next athlete on their team. The conferences will compete in three rounds, with the fastest team winning.
Helmet Harmony: A game show to test player knowledge of their teammates, with every correct answer worth one point.
Dodgeball: A two-round tournament featuring four teams of seven players.
The Pro Bowl Games continues at 2 p.m. Sunday at Camping World Stadium in Orlando. ABC and ESPN will televise Sunday’s events.
Before the flag-football game, the skills events on Sunday include:
Punt Perfect: One punter and one non-punter from each conference punt from the 35-yard line, attempting to place as many punts as possible in one minute (or 12 punts) into a set of six buckets in the end zone. Each bucket is worth one point, with every fourth punt worth three points.
Madden NFL 25 competition: Two AFC players and two NFC players meet in a high-stakes showdown in Madden NFL 25. The event will be streamed live on EA Sports Madden’s Twitch channel on Saturday with a full replay available on the NFL’s YouTube channel. In addition to being streamed live, a clip will air as part of Sunday’s coverage.
The Great Football Race: Six players from each conference will face off in a relay race consisting of five challenges, culminating with a sled push.
Tug-of-War: A five-on-five competition positioned above a foam pit, players are challenged to pull on the rope to move the opposing team in their direction. The competition will be the best-of-three.
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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X at @AMarkG1.
