Welcome in another episode of the podcast here today, Chase Porm, and speaking with good friend of mine, Robert Chapman.

He is an alderman in Clinton, Mississippi, works with the Clinton School District. He does some soccer play-by-play and former newspaper man. I've known him for a while back when he was my copy editor at the Daily Mississippi. And that's been almost 20 years ago. Now, Rob, thanks for joining me today. I want to talk some local government. Just kind of catch up with you because we hadn't for a while. It's my podcast. I can do whatever I want to do. We are. We are two decades, basically, from time at Ole Miss at the Daily Mississippi. And you've been out of media for a while. You've got a lot going on. It's kind of what I want to get into because you're still doing it to an extent.

But do you, is there any part of you that misses editing professional people's work and being good or bad at it at the time?

So my bill paying job is a communications director here, Clinton Public School District. So I get to edit

everybody's stuff all the time anyway. So, you know, it's playing with both of those worlds where I've got to

make sure the stuff that I put out, I'm not putting that Oxford comma in there because

Associated Press style, you don't. But then when I have other people saying,

hey, I'm working on this dissertation, can you read this chapter? I'm like, are we going with the Oxford comma or are we not? And they're saying, I don't know which one you're talking about. I'm going to stay consistent. We're going to go with it. So, you know, it's, I still get to edit. I still get to write.

I still get to see a lot of things from the media side.

I'm just the one now sending press release. I still get to edit. I still get to write. I still get to see a lot of things from the media side.

I'm just the one now sending press releases to the news stations and what's left of newspapers around here.

Instead of being the one getting it and thinking, is this worth my time going to chase down any information on it?

You know, we're probably going to be okay. I don't think we have to do any Mia Culpo that we're having somebody sideways associated with Clinton soccer on the podcast. I think Neil's probably going to be all right. You know, I traded off with him. Neither team pulled the title this year. That's true. Probably okay. The previous year when Oxford came down to play Clinton,

I think I got probably about a dozen pictures of his son. And so I was like, let me send them to you so you can at least have pictures. I don't know if you want them or not, but it's kind of like a peace offering. So yeah, but Clinton and Oxford, neither one of them, you know, made it to where they wanted to, but it's okay. There's always next year.

What is it? I'm just kind of not what I want to talk about, except for the podcast, but in general, what's allowed that program down there to be so year over year successful? I mean, is it Brilla and like the different, you know, is it just the culture? I mean, what has caused that to be such a power in that sport? Yeah, it's been a foundational start.

Clinton Soccer Association began back in the 70s and, you know, the kids in a suburban area just outside of Jackson right there in that 1970s kind of spree when everybody was

basically leaving Jackson to go find different places.

You had a good

collection of young men and young women who had a strong love of soccer. Parents had zero

clue what they were doing. So when they put together teams and they found, you know, kids from

Mississippi College who went to, you know, from England or Germany and even over in Bell Haven

that would come over and coach the young kids. It started kind of getting that going.

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