Another year and another case of a high school team in trouble for illegal activity.

In a case of deja’ vu, it was exactly one year ago that The News-Times published a story about four Lakeside baseball players being expelled for drinking on the bus on the way back from a game.

That pales in comparison to 18 players from the Greenbrier boys soccer team suspended for 10 days, pending a hearing, for smoking “spice” and drinking in hotel rooms at Jekyll Island while on a school-sponsored team trip.

The spring season is starting to rev up, and while there will be plenty of good rivalries across the spectrum, possibly the most interesting will be in Region 2-AAAAA baseball.

Using the same formula that the basketball teams employed, Evans, Greenbrier, Grovetown and Lakeside will play each other three times in the regular season.

Region play began Friday night with Grovetown and Evans sporting 5-0 records, Lakeside at 5-1 and Greenbrier, which has been plagued by rainouts, at 2-1.

It’s the beginning of the spring sports season and time for the weather to intervene.

True, the weather-guessers were wrong about multiple inches of snow falling recently – do we live in Arizona? I have a feeling that rain, which has already affected lacrosse, soccer and baseball games, is going to hit us full-force. As I was typing this Thursday, I had every expectation that the Friday and Saturday slate of baseball games, of which there were seven in Columbia County, would be washed out.

With the Georgia High School Association’s realignment of schools this year, Columbia County basketball teams in Region 2A-AAAAA took it upon themselves to play each other three times instead of just twice this season, and it’s working out perfectly.

Unlike last year for the boys, this year there shouldn’t be a coin flip to decide seeding for the region tournament. The seeds will be determined by play on the court, as it should be.