After a few years of increasingly competitive games, the organizers of the SWAC Shootout and Step Show decided to lighten things up.

The featured basketball game at the 18th annual event Saturday at Vicksburg High School will be a faculty game between the staffs of Warren Central and Vicksburg high schools and junior highs.

Event coordinator Doug Fitzgerald said the change came after several years of all-star games between alumni teams from Mississippi’s Southwestern Athletic Conference colleges had gotten a bit too intense.

“We just tweaked it a little bit. The thing had gotten so competitive that Jackson State was bringing their team over,” Fitzgerald said. “We’re going to have a lot of fun with it. A couple of principals will play, and some staff members from Warren Central, Warren Junior, Vicksburg and Vicksburg Junior High. We’re probably going to have a lot of water and Ben Gay on hand.”

The SWAC Shootout and Step Show is a fundraiser for the Vicksburg Warren Chapter of the Alcorn State University National Alumni Association. Admission is $5.

The event will begin at noon with a basketball game between members of the Omega Psi Phi and Kappa Alpha Psi fraternities. The faculty game will start around 1:15 p.m. Among the notable faculty on the two rosters are Vicksburg High principal Deowarski McDonald, assistant VHS boys basketball coach Kevin Carter and Warren Central’s Louis Green, an Alcorn graduate and former NFL player.

In between games there will be a step show featuring local high school groups, college fraternities and alumni groups.

“It’s very entertaining,” Fitzgerald said of the step show. “Most of the steppers are young kids mimicking what they see with the fraternities on campus.”

If you go

What: 18th annual SWAC Shootout and Step Show

When: Saturday at noon

Where: Vicksburg High School gym

Admission: $5