School Sports Year Wrap-up: The "Circle of Life." A song by Elton John. Not a bad song, but not in my top five by him. Let me think about that for a minute.

"I Guess That's Why They Call it the Blues," "I'm Still Standing," "Little Jeannie," "Mama Can't Buy You Love," "Philadelphia Freedom." There are five frontrunners in no particular order.

Oh yes - the circle - or maybe the cycle. The sports year rolls in a cycle. It starts in the fall (really late summer) with football and ends in the spring with - in this case - softball.

At Tallassee, the Tigers will actually close out the school year with spring football this week. The Tigers did just miss reaching the state softball tournament. Congrats to Elmore County, by the way.

This upcoming off-season will give us a chance to recharge our batteries. A few months off isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Looking back on the past sports seasons, I'd say it was a good year and we appear to be trending in the right direction.

There were some individual state champions from THS.

Macey Stewart won two more blue ribbons in swimming (100-meter backstroke, 100-meter freestyle). Land Bell won the 132-pound wrestling title. Kayden Slay picked up a gold medal in the high jump in track (and a silver in the long jump).

The football team reached the second round of the playoffs. It was their first playoff win since 2017.

The wrestlers just missed a championship in the state duals tournament in Birmingham finishing second. They were seventh in the state tourney in Huntsville.

The boys basketball team reached the post-season again. It was the sixth straight winning season. That may seem like no big deal to some, but there was a time when it was quite difficult to have more wins than losses.

Fast-forward to right now. The most recent spring season might be among the most successful all-around for the program in quite a while.

The soccer team had its winningest single season in school history. The baseball team got back to the playoffs after a five-year drought and won its first playoff series since 2017.

The softball girls won the area championship. They just missed reaching the state tourney.

Several teams on campus are competing at a championship level. The state titles are tough to attain however.

The last team championship at the school came in 2014 with wrestling. Tallassee wrestling today is among the very best programs regardless of classification and will be among the contenders again next season.

Softball will have some holes to fill, but three eighth graders started on this year's team. The program should still be strong.

Nobody anywhere can really match what we see from the backers of the purple and gold. That was evident at Lagoon Park this past week. That was evident with folks following back home too.

Athletics at Tallassee are in a pretty good place right now. It sure is much more fun that way.

THS football kicks off on Aug. 24 in Reeltown. There are summer activities in sports outside of the school system though.

We've got swimming, plus all-star softball ad baseball. Tallassee will host all three state tournaments for Babe Ruth Baseball in July.

Keep those double a Duracells in your pocket for now. Looks like our plate is not quite empty after all.